Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

“Of course,” said the Oberst through Luhar. “I have already removed all or most of the compulsion which Herr Barent has set in place in your mind. Are you ready to continue, pawn?”

  “Yes,” said Saul. To continue to seek to find a way to kill you, he thought. “Very good,” said Luhar. He glanced at his watch. “We have about thirty minutes before Mr. Colben decides that he should join our party. It should be enough time.” He set his briefcase on the table near the black corpse’s left arm. When he snapped it open, Saul saw that it was filled with the same type of plastic explosive that Harrington had worn.

  “Should be enough time for what?” said Saul. “Preparations. This building has an unmarked crawlspace that connects to the basement next door. The basement next door has an access to a short segment of the city’s old storm sewer system. It will take us only a block, but it should be outside of the immediate circle of vigilance. A car will be waiting for me. You are welcome to go wherever you wish.”

  “You’re so damned clever it makes me want to vomit,” said Saul. “It won’t work.”

  “Oh?” Luhar raised heavy eyebrows.

  Saul took off his coat and rolled up his shirtsleeve. The ban dages had a slight yellow stain from ointment they had used. “They inserted something yesterday. I’d guess it’s a radio transmitter.”

  “Of course it is,” said Luhar. From the briefcase he removed a bundle wrapped in green cloth and unrolled it. A bottle of iodine and surgical instruments gleamed in the dim light from above. “The procedure should not take more than twenty minutes, should it?”

  Saul picked up a scalpel in its sterilpac. “And you will do the honors, I presume?”

  “If you insist,” said Luhar, “but I should point out that I have never had medical training.”

  “So I have the plea sure,” said Saul. He looked in the briefcase and glanced up. “No syringes? No local anesthetic?”

  Jensen Luhar’s mirrored sunglasses reflected the room. There was no expression on the heavy face. “Unfortunately, no. How much do you value your freedom, Dr. Laski?”

  “You are insane, Herr Oberst,” said Saul. He sat at the table, laid out the instruments, and pulled the bottle of iodine closer.

  Luhar pulled a gym bag out from under the table. “First we change clothes,” he said. “In case you do not feel like it later.”

  When the corpses were dressed in their clothes and Saul was wearing slightly baggy jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and heavy shoes a half size too small, Luhar said, “About eighteen minutes remaining, Doctor.”

  “Sit down,” said Saul. “I’m going to explain precisely what to do if I pass out.” He pulled packaged gauze and dressings from a clear bag. “You’re going to have to close it up.”

  “What ever you say, Doctor.”

  Saul shook his head, raised his eyes to the skylight for a moment, and then looked down and, with a single, sure move of the scalpel, made the initial incision.

  Saul did not pass out. He did scream twice and just after the transmitter filaments were separated from muscle fibers he leaned over and vomited. Luhar closed the wound with rough stitches and butterfly ban dages, wrapped gauze and tape around it, and tugged a bulky coat on the semi-conscious psychiatrist. “We are five minutes over schedule,” hissed Luhar. “Hurry.”

  The seemingly solid concrete floor had a trapdoor under wooden skids in a far corner. As Luhar pulled the door down, Saul could hear the roar of a helicopter and distant pounding. “Move!” hissed the big man in the cramped darkness. Saul tried to crawl, cried out as his arm burned with pain, and fell forward. A tremendous explosion from above shook the earth and sent powder and spiderwebs dropping into Saul’s face and hair. “Move!” hissed Luhar and shoved Saul ahead of him.

  Loose cement blocks. Luhar kicked them out of the way, pulled Saul to his feet in a dark basement smelling of mildew and old newspapers, kept him moving. They squeezed between a grate and bricks and then they were crawling again, Saul’s hands and knees submerged in icy water, touching slick, slimy things in the dark. Saul tried to cradle his left arm to him and crawl on three limbs. Twice he slipped and banged his left shoulder, soaking his jacket. Luhar laughed and shoved from behind. Saul closed his eyes and thought of Sobibor, the shouting masses, the quiet of the Forest of the Owls.

  Finally they could stand. Luhar led a hundred paces, turned right down a narrower conduit, and paused under a grill. His strong arms strained to move the iron lattice. Saul squinted in the gray light, concentrated on keeping the vertigo at bay, and slipped his hand in his coat pocket to feel the cold handle of the scalpel he had palmed while Luhar was making final adjustments to the timing device in the briefcase.

  “Ahh, there,” panted Luhar and shoved the grate aside. Both arms were still raised. The big man’s jacket hung open, exposing belly and chest under thin cloth. Saul braced himself and lunged with the scalpel, imagining a target for the blade somewhere beyond the man’s spine.

  Jensen Luhar’s left arm came down in a blur, a massive hand closed on Saul’s forearm, and the blade halted three inches above the black man’s sternum. “Tsk, tsk,” said Luhar. With his right hand he chopped at Saul’s bleeding left arm. Saul gasped and dropped to his knees while red circles swam in his narrowing field of vision. Luhar gently lifted the scalpel out of his limp right hand. “Naughty, naughty, mein kleine Jude,” he whispered. “Auf wiedersehen.”

  The light was blocked for a second and Luhar was gone. Saul knelt in the darkness, lowering his forehead to the water and cold stone for several minutes, fighting to stay conscious. Why? he thought. Why stay awake? Sleep awhile.

  Shut up, he snarled at himself.

  After an eternity he stood up, raised his good arm to the grate above, and tried to pull himself up and out. It took five tries and his jeans were soaked from falling, but eventually he clawed his way into sunlight.

  The storm drain was behind a metal Dumpster a dozen feet into a narrow alley. He did not recognize the street he staggered onto. Rowhouses stretched up a long hill.

  Saul made half a block before dizziness claimed him. He stopped and held his left arm. The wound had opened. The bleeding had soaked through the thick jacket, dripped down his arm, and stained the entire left side of his coat. He looked back from where he had come and laughed to see a distinct trail of crimson spatters. He squeezed the arm and staggered against the plate glass window of an abandoned store. The sidewalk was rising and falling like the deck of a small ship on a rough sea.

  It was getting dark. Snow flurries glowed like fireflies in front of a distant streetlight. A large, dark figure was walking downhill on Saul’s side of the street. Saul staggered backward into the doorway of the shop, slid down the rough wall, pulled his knees up, and tried hard to be as invisible as any wino who had ever sought such shelter.

  Just as the man walked slowly past, Saul felt something else tear in the muscles of his left arm. He clutched at it and gritted his teeth until their grinding was audible. The man walked past, carrying something heavy and metallic in his right hand.

  Saul felt the blackness winning even as the heavy footsteps stopped a few yards down the hill and then slowly returned. Saul rolled to his left, only distantly feeling his head strike the door. His left arm was on fire and he felt the blood soaking his wrist and hand.

  A flashlight beam stabbed into his eyes. The big man leaned over him, blotting out the street, the world. Saul clenched his right fist and fought to stay above the whirling vortex of unconsciousness. A heavy hand closed on his right shoulder.

  “Sweet Christ,” said a slow, familiar voice. “Saul, is that you?”

  Saul nodded and felt his head continue forward, his chin on his chest, his eyes closing, even as the soft voice continued saying things he did not understand and the strong arms of Sheriff Bobby Joe Gentry lifted him and cradled him as easily as one would carry a sleeping child.

  THIRTY

  Germantown

  Tuesday, Dec. 30, 1980

  Gentry wonder
ed if he was going insane. As he rushed back to Community House, he wished Saul was conscious so they could talk about it. It seemed to Gentry that the world had become a paranoid nightmare where cause-effect chains had broken down completely.

  The twin called G. B. stopped Gentry half a block from the house. The sheriff stared at the muzzle opening of the crude pistol and snapped, “Let me through. Marvin knows I’m coming back.”

  “Yeah, but he don’t know you bringing some dead honky dude back with you.”

  “He’s not dead and he may be able to help us. If he does die, I’ll make sure that Marvin holds you responsible. Now let me through.”

  G. B. hesitated. “Fuck you, pig,” he said at last, but stood aside. Gentry had to pass three more sentries before getting to the house. Marvin had extended their defensive perimeter a hundred yards in each direction. Any unknown vehicle on the block was to be fire-bombed if it did not get moved. A green van with two whites in front and God knows how many in back had spent thirty seconds considering Leroy’s ultimatum before moving out at high speed. Perhaps it was the liter bottle of Shell unleaded in Leroy’s right hand that convinced them.

  Monday night had been entry into nightmare.

  Marvin and the others had returned to Community House through alleys and backyards, Leroy bleeding from a dozen shotgun pellet wounds, all of them except Marvin semi-hysterical in the aftermath of the gun battle in the dark apartment building. They had dragged Calvin’s and Trout’s bodies into the building and Marvin had planned to send Jackson or Taylor back with Jim Woods’s panel truck, but the confusion they returned to sidelined that for hours. By the time they did send a truck shortly before sunrise, the five bodies were gone and only anonymous pools of blood remained on the second and third floors. No authorities were on the scene.

  The Community House was bedlam when they returned. Shots were being fired at every shadow. Someone had put out the fires in the derelict autos, but smoke still hung over the block like a cloud of death.

  “He was here, man, the honky monster, man, here, like in the house, he got, like, the wimp Woods and hit Kara real hard, man, and Raji like saw him chasing the camera chick across the yard, man, and . . .” babbled Taylor when they arrived.

  “Where is Kara!” roared Marvin. It was the first time Gentry had heard the young man shout.

  Kara was upstairs, said Taylor, on the mattress behind the curtain, hurt real bad. Gentry followed them upstairs. Most of the gang members there were staring at Woods’s headless body on the pool table, but Marvin and Jackson went straight to where Kara lay unconscious, being tended to by four other girls.

  “Doesn’t look good,” said Jackson. The girl’s beautiful face was almost unrecognizable, the forehead swollen grotesquely, eyes darkened with draining blood. “Should be in the hospital. Pulse and blood pressure way down.”

  “Hey, man,” protested Leroy, showing a right arm and leg peppered with bloody circles, “I hurt. Lemme go with you and get fixed up and . . .”

  “Stay here,” snapped Marvin. “Get these assholes together. Nobody gets within half a block of here, dig? Tell Sherman and Eduardo to get their asses over to Dogtown and give Mannie the word. We want the troops he promised us last winter when we helped them out in the Pastorius thing. We want them now. Tell Squeeze that we want all the midgets and auxiliaries on the street now. I want to know where that fucking Voodoo Lady is.”

  As he continued to snap orders and while Jackson tenderly carried Kara downstairs, Gentry pulled Taylor to one side. “Where’s Natalie?”

  The youth shook his head and then let out a gasp as Gentry closed his grip on an upper bicep. “Shit, man. Honky monster after her. Raji seen them going across that yard, between the buildings, man. It was dark. We went after him, couldn’t see nothing.”

  “How long ago?” Gentry squeezed harder. “Hey, shit. Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five.”

  Gentry went quickly downstairs and caught Marvin before he left. “I want my gun.”

  The gang leader stared with pale blue eyes that were as cold as sea ice. “That son of a bitch is after Natalie and I’m going after him. Give me the Ruger.” He held out his hand.

  Leroy let his shotgun slide into his right hand. The barrel moved toward Gentry and he looked to Marvin for the word.

  Marvin tugged out the heavy Ruger and handed it to Gentry. “Kill him, man.”

  “Yeah.” Gentry went upstairs, dug out the extra box of cartridges, and reloaded. The heavy Magnum bullets slid in smooth and heavy to Gentry’s touch. He realized that his hand was shaking. He leaned over and took deep breaths until the shaking stopped, went downstairs to find a flashlight, and went out into the night.

  Saul Laski regained consciousness just as Jackson inspected the wound. “Somebody been working on you with a can opener it looks like,” said the ex-medic. “Give me your other arm. I’m going to give you an ampoule morphine while I work on this.”

  Saul put his head back against the mattress. His face and lips were white behind dark whiz kerns. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks, nothing. You going to get my bill. There are brothers here that would kill for this morphine.” He injected Saul with a swift, sure motion. “You white boys don’t know how to take care of your bodies.”

  Gentry talked quickly before the morphine put the psychiatrist out of touch. “What the hell are you doing here, Saul?”

  The older man shook his head. “Long story. There are more people involved in this than I ever imagined, Sheriff . . .”

  “We’re finding that out,” said Gentry. “Do you know where your Oberst is?”

  Jackson finished cleaning the wound and began restitching it. Saul took one glance and then looked away. “No, not exactly. But he is here somewhere. Close by. I just met a black man named Jensen Luhar who has been one of the Oberst’s agents for years. The others . . . Colben, Haines . . . let me loose in the chance I could lead them to the Oberst.”

  “Haines!” said Gentry. “Damn, I knew I didn’t like that sonofabitch.” Saul licked his lips. His voice was growing thick and dreamy. “Natalie? She is here?”

  Gentry looked away, glowered at shadows. “She was. Someone got her . . . took her away . . . twenty-four hours ago.”

  Saul tried to sit up. Jackson cursed and pushed him back. “Alive?” managed Saul.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been searching the streets for the past twenty-four hours,” said Gentry. He rubbed his eyes. He had not slept for over forty-eight hours. “There’s no reason to think that Melanie Fuller would keep Natalie alive when she’s murdered so many others,” he said. “But something keeps me looking. I just have this feeling. If you can tell me everything you know, then maybe together we can . . .” Gentry stopped. Jackson was almost finished. Saul Laski was fast asleep.

  “How’s Kara?” asked Gentry as he came into the kitchen.

  Marvin looked up from the table. A cheap city map lay spread out there, anchored by beer cans and bags of potato chips. Leroy sat near him, white ban dages showing through torn clothing. Various lieutenants came and went, but the house had a quiet, purposeful atmosphere far different from the chaos of the day before. “She’s not good,” said Marvin. “The doctor says she’s hurt bad. Cassandra and Shelli over there now. They’ll send someone over if anything changes.”

  Gentry nodded and sat down. He could feel the fatigue toxins working at him, putting a sheen of dull light on every surface he looked at. He rubbed his face.

  “Dude upstairs going to help you find your woman?”

  Gentry blinked. “I don’t know.”

  “Can he help us find the Voodoo Lady?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Jackson says he’ll be able to talk to us in a couple of hours. Any of your people have anything?”

  “Just a matter of time, man,” said Marvin. “Just a matter of time. We got the girls, the auxiliaries, all going door to door. No way white old woman like that be here and no one know it. Soon as we find her, we’re ready.”

 
; Gentry tried to focus on what he wanted to say. Words were becoming hard to manipulate. “You know about the others . . . the federal cops.”

  Marvin laughed. It was a thin, cold sound. “Yeah, sure, they’re all over the fucking place. But they’re keeping the local pigs and TV people out of this, right?”

  “Must be,” said Gentry. “But my point is that they’re as dangerous as the Voodoo Lady. Some of them have the same . . . the same powers as she does. And they’re hunting for a man who’s even more dangerous.”

  “You think they done any of the stuff to Soul Brickyard, man?” asked Marvin.

  “No.”

  “They have anything to do with the honky monster?”

  “No.”

  “Then we let them wait awhile. They get in our way, we’ll do them too.”

  “You’re talking about forty or fifty plainclothes federal officers,” said Gentry. “They’re usually armed to the teeth.”

  Marvin shrugged. Someone rushed in and spoke softly to him. The gang leader gave quick, sure orders in a calm voice. The other man went out.

  Gentry lifted a can, found there was some warm beer left, and took a drink. “Have you considered just walking away while you can?” he said. “I mean, just getting everyone under cover and letting all these vampires fight it out?”

  Marvin looked straight at Gentry. “Man,” he said in a voice not much louder than a whisper, “you don’t understand much. White folks, government, the pigs, the greasy white politicians around here— they all be fucking us over for a long time. Nothing new about what the honky monster’s doing to black people, but he doing it to us on our turf, man. You and Natalie say the Voodoo Lady really doing it, and I think that’s right. It feels right. But not just the Voodoo Lady, either. Behind her, be others ready to shit on us. Be doing it a long, long time. But this is Soul Brickyard. The people they kill here— Muhammed, George, Calvin . . . maybe Kara . . . they’re ours, man. We’re going to kill that honky monster and the white bitch for that. We don’t expect no one to help us. But if you want to be with us, you can be, man.”