Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  Harod looked up in alarm, but Barent only continued smiling. Harod realized how foolish it had been of him to hope that Maria Chen might be able to help in a crisis.

  “Diversion from what?” continued Sutter. “It would seem to this poor old backwoods minister to be a poor excuse for a diversion.”

  “Well, somebody’s controlling him,” snapped Kepler. “Perhaps not,” Willi said softly.

  All heads turned toward him. “My little Jew has been amazingly per sis-tent over the years,” said Willi. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered him in Charleston seven months ago.”

  Barent’s smile had disappeared. “Wilhelm, you are contending that this . . . man . . . came here of his own free will?”

  “Ja.” Willi smiled. “My pawn from the old days still follows me.” Kepler was livid. “So you admit that you’re the reason he’s here, even if he came on his own to find you.”

  “Not at all,” Willi said affably. “It was your genius that had the Jew’s family killed in Virginia.”

  Barent tapped his lower lip with a crooked finger. “Assuming he knew who was responsible, how did he find out the details of the Island Club?” Even before he had finished the question, Barent had turned to look at Harod.

  “How could I have known he was acting alone?” Harod asked plaintively. “They shot me full of fucking drugs.”

  Jimmy Wayne Sutter stood and approached a monitor where light-enhancement lenses showed a pale, naked figure struggling through vines and tumbled tombstones. “Then who is working with him now?” Sutter asked so softly that he seemed to be speaking to himself.

  “Die Negerin,” said Willi. “The black girl. The one with the sheriff in Germantown.” He laughed, throwing his head back so that fillings were visible in molars worn down by age. “Die Untermenschen are rising up just as the Führer feared.”

  Sutter turned away from the screen just as Barent’s Jamaican surrogate appeared on it, moving quickly and surely through the vine-covered cemetery where Laski had stumbled out of sight a moment before. “Where is the girl then?” asked Sutter.

  Willi shrugged. “It does not matter. Were there any black bitches in your surrogate pens?”

  “No,” said Barent. “Then she is elsewhere,” said Willi. “Perhaps dreaming of her revenge on the cabal that killed her father.”

  “We did not kill her father,” said Barent, obviously deep in thought. “Melanie Fuller or Nina Drayton did.”

  “Exactly.” Willi laughed. “Another small irony. But the Jew is here, and it seems almost certain that die Negerin helped him get here.”

  They all looked at the monitors, but the only surrogate visible was Sutter’s man Amos, looking like a diminutive Sumo wrestler as he thrashed his way through high grass just south of the old DeBose plantation. Sutter’s eyes were closed with the concentration of controlling the man.

  “We need to question Laski,” said Kepler. “Find out where the girl is.”

  “Nein,” said Willi, staring intently at Barent. “We need to kill the Jew as quickly as possible. Even if he is insane, he might have some way to strike at us.”

  Barent unfolded his arms and smiled again. “Worried, William?”

  Willi shrugged again. “It only makes sense. If we all cooperate in killing the Jew, it eliminates any possible chance that he was brought here by one of us to gain some advantage. The girl will be easy enough to find, ja? My guess is that she is in Charleston again.”

  “Guesses aren’t good enough,” snapped Kepler. “I say we interrogate him.”

  “James?” said Barent.

  Sutter opened his eyes. “Kill him and get back to the game,” he said and closed his eyes.

  “Tony?”

  Harod looked up with a start. “You mean I get a fucking vote?”

  “We will deal with the other issues later,” said Barent. “Right now you are a member of the Island Club and have voting privileges.”

  Harod showed his small, sharp teeth. “Then I abstain,” he said. “Just leave me the hell alone and do what ever you want with that guy.”

  Barent tapped his lip and watched an empty monitor. A lightning flash overloaded the sensitive lens for a second and filled the screen with white light. “William,” said Barent, “I fail to see how this man could be a threat, but I agree with your logic that he would be less a threat if he were dead. We will find the girl and any other would-be avengers without much problem.”

  Willi leaned forward. “Can you wait until Jensen— my surrogate— is recovered?”

  Barent shook his head. “It would only delay the game,” he said and raised a microphone from the console. “Mr. Swanson?” he said and listened on a small headphone set for a response. “Are you tracking the surrogate who ran north? Good. Yes, I also show him in Sector two-seven-bravo-six. Yes, it is time we terminated this particular intruder with extreme prejudice. Have the shore patrol units close in now and release helicopter number three from sentry duty. Yes, use the infrared if possible and relay the ground sensor data directly to the search teams. Yes, I’m sure you will, but quickly, please. Thank you. Barent out.”

  Natalie Preston sat in Melanie Fuller’s dark house in Old Charleston and thought about Rob Gentry. She had thought about him often in the past months, almost every evening as she drifted off to sleep, but in the two months since leaving Israel she had tried to push her grief and regret farther back to make room for the grim determination she felt must fill her mind. It had not worked. Since arriving in Charleston she had contrived to drive by Rob’s house daily, usually in the evening. She had spent her few hours away from Saul taking walks in the quiet streets where she and Rob had walked, remembering not just the trivial details of their conversations but the deeper feelings that had been growing between them, deepening and opening in spite of their mutual understanding of how complicated and poorly timed a love affair between them would be. She had visited Rob’s grave three times, each time being overcome with a sense of loss that she knew no amount of revenge could overcome or compensate for, and each time vowing that she would not return.

  As Natalie began the second endless night in Melanie Fuller’s house of horrors, she knew beyond any shade of doubt that if she was to survive the next few hours and days it would be through the recall of love rather than a determination to gain revenge.

  It had been a little more than twenty-four hours that Natalie had been alone with Melanie Fuller’s brain-dead menagerie. It had been an eternity.

  Sunday night had been very bad. Natalie had stayed in the Fuller house until four o’clock Monday morning, leaving only when it seemed certain that Saul was safe until the next evening’s slaughter. If he was still alive. Natalie knew only what the Melanie monster told her through the mouth of the brain-dead child who had once been Justin Warden. The cover story that Nina could not control Saul at such a distance— that Nina required Melanie’s help if they were to save Willi and themselves from the Island Club’s wrath— seemed less and less satisfactory as the hours crawled by.

  For long periods during the first night Justin would sit silent and sightless, the other members of Melanie’s “family” also as lifeless as mannequins. Natalie assumed that the old woman was busy controlling Miss Sewell or the man they had watched through binoculars for weeks as she and Justin stood in the park overlooking the river. No, it was too early for that. Justin had said that Melanie had watched the first night’s slaughter on the island through the eyes of one of the security guards. Natalie had summoned her strongest Nina persona to warn Melanie not to meddle too soon and give away her presence. Justin had glared and said nothing for an hour, leaving Natalie helpless, waiting for information. Waiting for the old woman to slip into her mind and kill her. Kill them both.

  Natalie sat in the house that smelled of garbage and rotting food and tried to think about Rob, what Rob would say in such a situation, what joke he might make. Sometime after midnight, Natalie used Nina’s arrogant tones to demand that a light be turned on. The gian
t called Culley had shuffled over to switch on a single 40-watt bulb in a lamp whose shade had been torn half off. The flat, naked glare was worse than the darkness. The parlor was filled with dust, pieces of forgotten clothing, cobwebs, and a mad litter of rotting food. A browning, half-chewed ear of corn was visible under the sagging sofa. Orange rinds were scattered under the Georgian tea table. Someone, perhaps Justin, had heedlessly smeared raspberry or strawberry jam on the arms of the chair and sofa, leaving caked hand-prints that made Natalie think of drying blood. She heard rats scurrying in the walls, perhaps in the hallways themselves; entrance would have been easy enough from the palmetto trees through the cracked window panes Natalie could see from the courtyard each time she approached the house. Sometimes there were stirrings from the second floor, but these were much too loud to be made by rats. Natalie thought of the dying thing she had glimpsed upstairs, the old woman as wrinkled and twisted as some ancient tortoise ripped from its shell, kept alive by intravenous saline solutions and merciless machines, and sometimes— when long periods passed with none of the obscene “family” moving or even appearing to breathe— Natalie wondered if perhaps Melanie Fuller had died and these flesh and blood automatons simply continued to act out the last fetid fantasies in a decaying brain, marionettes dancing to the puppet master’s death spasms.

  “They have your Jew,” lisped Justin late on the second night. It was after midnight.

  Natalie startled from her half doze. Culley stood behind the child’s chair, his bloated face lit from below by the single bulb. Marvin, Howard, and the Nurse Oldsmith were somewhere in the shadows behind Natalie. “Who took him?” she gasped.

  The child’s face looked phony in the cold light, a doll’s visage molded in flaking rubber. Natalie remembered her glimpse of the life-size doll in Grumblethorpe and realized with a cold internal twist that Melanie had somehow transformed this child into an imitation of that decaying thing. “No one took him,” snapped Justin. “They opened the bars an hour ago and let him out for the evening’s fun. Have you no contact, Nina?”

  Natalie chewed her lip and looked around her. Jackson was in the car a block away, Catfish watching the house from an alley across the street. They might as well have been on a different planet. “Melanie, it’s too soon,” she snapped. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Justin showed his baby teeth. “I think not, Nina, darling,” he hissed. “It is time to tell me where you are.” Culley stepped around the chair. Marvin came in from the kitchen. He was carrying a long knife that caught the light from the 40-watt bulb. Nurse Oldsmith made a noise behind Natalie.

  “Stop,” whispered Natalie. Her throat had constricted at the last second so that what should have been Nina’s authoritative command emerged as a choked entreaty.

  “No, no, no,” hissed Justin and slid from his chair. He moved toward her in a half crouch, fingers touching the grimed Oriental carpet as if he were climbing a wall like a fly. “Time to tell us all, Nina, or lose this colored one. Show me, Nina. Show me what Ability you have left. If you are Nina.” The child’s face was contorted into a feral mask, as if the rubber doll’s head were melting in unseen flames.

  “No,” said Natalie, standing. Culley blocked her way to the door. Marvin moved around the edge of the sofa. He ran his cupped hand up the length of the knife, and the blade came away slickened with his blood.

  “Time to tell all, Nina,” whispered Justin. There was a thrashing, sliding sound from the second floor. “Or time for this one to die.”

  The wind struck before the rain, whipping the palm trees back and forth in a frenzy, blowing fronds and branches through the air in a shower of sharp-edged debris. Saul stumbled to his knees and covered his head with his arms as the foliage thrashed at him with a thousand small claws. Lightning froze the wind-tossed chaos in a series of stroboscopic images as thunderclaps overlapped to provide a solid wall of noise.

  Saul was lost. He curled under a massive fern as the storm front struck and tried to sort some sense of direction out of the night’s confusion. He had reached the salt marshes, but then became disoriented, emerging into what should have been the final stretch of jungle only to find himself back at the slave cemetery an hour later. A helicopter roared overhead, its searchlight probing with a shaft of white light no less intense than the lightning behind it.

  Saul crawled deeper under the fern, not knowing which side of the salt marsh he was now on. Just after he had reached the slave cemetery again, hours before, the tall, lanky surrogate with long hair had exploded from the shadows behind a fallen wall and had gone for Saul with teeth and fingernails. Exhausted, dazed with fatigue and fear, Saul had grasped at the nearest object— a rusted iron rod that might once have been a support for a grave marker— and tried to fend off the boy. The rod had struck the youth on the side of the head and opened a long gash. The boy fell unconscious. Saul kneeled at his side, found a pulse, and ran on into the jungle.

  The helicopter came over again just as Saul reached the cover of cypress trees beyond the salt marsh. The wind roar drowned any noise of the rotors even though the machine was only twenty feet above the trees as it slid past, fighting the gusts. Saul felt little fear of the he li cop ter; it was too unstable to be used as a gun platform in the storm and he doubted if they could see him unless they caught him in the open.

  Saul wondered why the sun had not risen. He was sure that more than enough hours had passed since his torment had begun for a dozen nights to have burned themselves out. He had been running forever. Crouching near the base of the cypress. Saul gasped, drawing in deep breaths, and stared at his legs and feet. They looked as if someone had drawn racks of razor blades across them. For a second he entertained the illusion that he was wearing red and white striped socks and crimson slippers.

  The wind dropped and in the momentary lull before the rain began, Saul lifted his face to the sky and cried in Hebrew. “Hoy! What other jokes do you have in store?”

  A bright beam stabbed horizontally at him from beyond the cypress. For a second Saul thought it was lightning and then wondered how the helicopter had managed to land, but in a second he realized it was neither. Beyond the screen of cypress was a narrow beach and beyond that the ocean. The guard boats were probing the shore with their searchlights.

  Heedless of the light, Saul crawled toward the sand. The only beach this side of the Security Zone was at the northern tip of the island. He had made it. How many times, he wondered, had he come within yards of the beach only to be disoriented and turned back by swamp and jungle?

  The beach was narrow here, no more than ten or twelve feet across, and tall waves crashed against rocks just beyond. Until the lull in the storm, wind and thunder had masked the sound of the breakers. Saul stumbled to his knees in the sand and looked out to sea.

  There were at least two small boats out there beyond the line of surf, their powerful searchlights raking the beach with pitching shafts of white light. Lightning silhouetted both craft for a second, and Saul could see that they were less than a hundred meters out. The dark forms of men with rifles were clearly visible.

  One of the searchlights slid along the beach and wall of foliage toward Saul and he ran toward the jungle, throwing himself into the ferns and tall sea grass an instant before the light struck. Crouching on all fours behind a low dune, he thought about his position. The helicopter and patrol boats showed that Barent and the others had abandoned their game with surrogates and almost certainly knew who they were chasing. Saul could hope that his presence had spread confusion if not actual dissension in their ranks, but he was not counting on it. Underestimating the intelligence or tenacity of one’s enemies was never profitable. Saul had flown home during the most panicky hours of the Yom Kippur War and knew quite well how complacency often could prove fatal.

  Saul plunged ahead, paralleling the beach, thrashing through thick undergrowth and tripping over mangrove roots, unsure even if he was headed in the right direction. Every minute or two he would throw himse
lf flat as the searchlights flashed past or the helicopter roared along the beach. Somehow, he knew, they had narrowed his whereabouts to this tip of the island. He had seen no cameras or sensors during his hours of stumbling flight, but he had no doubt that Barent and the others used every piece of technology available to record their sick games and to reduce the chance that a clever surrogate might hide out for weeks or months on the island.

  Saul tripped over an invisible root and sprawled forward, his head striking a thick branch before his face landed in six inches of brackish swamp water. He was just conscious enough to roll to one side, grabbing at sharp-edged grass to pull himself toward the beach. Blood ran down his cheek and into his open mouth; it tasted much like the salty swamp water.

  The beach was wider here, although not as wide as the strip where the Cessna had landed. Saul realized that he would never find the tidal inlet and streams if he stayed in the trees. He might already have passed them without noticing it in the nightmare jungle of swamp and branches. If it was any real distance away it would take hours to traverse at this rate. His only hope lay on the beach.

  More boats were closing in on the area. Saul could see four from where he lay under the low branches of a cypress and one was moving closer, less than thirty meters out, tossed high by each storm-driven wave. It was beginning to rain now, and Saul prayed for a tropical downpour, a deluge that reduced visibility to zero and drowned his enemies like the Pharaoh’s soldiers. But the rain held steady in a light drizzle that might be only the prelude to the real storm or might pass completely, eventually opening the skies to a tropical sunrise that would seal Saul’s fate.

  He waited five minutes under the limbs, crouching behind sea grass and a fallen log when the boats came close with their lights or the he li copter passed over. He felt like laughing, like standing up and throwing stones and curses at them for the few blessed seconds before the bullets struck. Saul crouched and waited, peering out as yet another patrol boat roared by in the rain, its rooster tail adding to the curtain of salt spray already blowing in to the beach.