Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  All of the three remaining floodlights had gone out on the hillside. Natalie moved ahead with the flashlight and Colt while Jackson supported Saul. The psychiatrist had slid into unconsciousness again even before they were through the french doors. The Cessna was still there, the prop was still turning, but the pilot was gone.

  “Oh, Jesus,” breathed Natalie, playing the light in the backseat and on the ground near the plane.

  “Can you fly this thing?” asked Jackson, getting Saul onto the padded back bench and crouching next to him. He was already ripping open sterile dressings and preparing the plasma.

  “No,” said Natalie. She looked downhill. What had been a rough approximation of a landing field now was total darkness. Dazzled by the flashlight, her eyes could not make out even where the tree lines began.

  There came a huffing, panting sound from down the hill and Natalie leveled the flashlight with her left hand while steadying the Colt on the strut with her right. Daryl Meeks raised his hand to block the light and bent over to wheeze and gasp.

  “Where were you?” demanded Natalie, lowering the flashlight.

  Meeks started to speak, spat, wheezed a second, and said, “Lights went off.”

  “We know that. Where . . .”

  “Get in,” said Meeks, mopping his face with the YOKAHAMA TAIYO WHALES baseball cap.

  Natalie nodded and jogged around behind the plane to get in her side rather than crawl past the controls and risk knocking off the emergency brake or something. Tony Harod was waiting under the wing on the other side.

  “Please,” he whined. “You have to take me with you. I really did save his life, honest. Please.”

  Natalie felt the faintest hint of something sliding into her consciousness, like a furtive hand in the dark, but she had not waited for that. She had moved in closer as soon as Harod began to speak and now she kicked him in the testicles with as much swing as she could get into the kick, glad that she had worn solid hiking shoes rather than sneakers. Harod dropped the bottle he was still carrying and folded up on the grass with both hands between his legs.

  Natalie stepped onto the strut and fumbled the door open. She didn’t know how much concentration a mind vampire required to do his trick, but she assumed it was more than Tony Harod could muster at the moment. “Go!” she cried, but it was redundant; Meeks had the aircraft rolling even before her door was closed.

  She fumbled for her seat belt, could not find it, and settled for hanging on to the console with both hands, the Colt getting in the way. If the uphill landing had been exciting, the trip back down was Space Mountain, the Matterhorn Ride, and her dad’s favorite— the Wildcat Rollercoaster— all in one. Natalie saw at once what Meeks had been up to. Two railroad flares sputtered redly thirty feet apart at the end of the long corridor of darkness.

  “Gotta know where the ground ends and the drop starts!” Meeks shouted over the rising roar of the engine and bouncing landing gear. “Used to work pretty well when Pop and I played horse shoes in the dark. Put our cigarettes on the stakes.”

  There was no more time for talk. The bouncing got worse, the flares rushed toward them and were suddenly past, and Natalie realized the worst fear of a rollercoaster phobia— what if you came rushing over the top of one of those hills and the rails just stopped and the car kept going?

  Natalie had estimated— at a calmer time when the information had seemed mildly interesting— that the sea cliffs below the Manse were about two hundred feet high. The Cessna had fallen half that distance and showed no signs of a miraculous recovery when Meeks did an interesting thing; he put the nose of the aircraft down and revved the throttle to push them faster toward the white lines of surf which filled the windscreen. Natalie later had no memory of screaming or of inadvertently pulling the trigger on the Colt, but Jackson later assured her that the scream was impressive, and the bullet hole in the roof of the Cessna spoke for itself.

  Meeks was surly about that for much of the ride back. As soon as they had pulled out of the dive that gave them sufficient airspeed and had begun to climb west to cruising altitude, Natalie turned her mind to other things. “How’s Saul?” she asked, swiveling in her seat.

  “Out,” said Jackson. He was still kneeling in the cramped space. He had worked on Saul right through the E-ticket takeoff.

  “Will he live?” asked Natalie.

  Jackson looked at her, his eyes just visible in the dim instrument glow. “If I can get him stable,” he said. “Probably. I can’t tell about other things— internal stuff, concussion. The bullet in his shoulder’s not as bad as I thought. It looks like the slug came a long way or ricocheted before it got him. I can feel it about two inches under, right up by the bone here. Saul must’ve been bending over when it caught him. If he’d been straight up and down, it would’ve taken his right lung out when it exited. He bled a lot, but I’m pumping him full of plasma. Got plenty of that left. Know something, Nat?”

  “What?”

  “Black man invented plasma. Fellow named Charles Drew. I read somewhere that he bled to death after a car accident in the nineteen fifties because some cracker North Carolina hospital didn’t have any ‘Negro blood’ in the fridge and refused to give him ‘white blood.’ ”

  “That hardly seems relevant right now,” snapped Natalie.

  Jackson shrugged. “Saul would’ve liked it. The man has a better sense of irony than you do, Nat. Comes from being a shrink probably.”

  Meeks removed his cigar. “I hate to break up this romantic chatter,” he said, “but does your friend need to get to the nearest hospital?”

  “You mean like somewhere other than Charleston?” asked Jackson. “Yeah,” said Meeks. “Savannah’s an hour closer than Charleston ’n Brunswick or Meridian or one of those places is a lot closer than either. Make me feel easier about the gas problem, too.”

  Jackson glanced at Natalie. “Give me ten minutes with him,” he said to Meeks. “Let me get some blood into him and check his signs and we’ll see.”

  “If we can get back to Charleston without putting Saul at risk, I want to,” said Natalie, surprising even herself. “I need to.”

  “It’s your outing.” Meeks shrugged. “I can head straight in rather than hug the coast, but it makes for a real wet landing if I misjudge the fuel situation.”

  “Don’t misjudge it,” said Natalie. “Yeah,” said Meeks. “You got some gum or something?”

  “Sorry,” said Natalie. “Well then, stick your finger in the hole you put in my roof,” said Meeks. “That whistling noise gets on my nerves.”

  In the end, it was Saul who decided that they would return to Charleston. After three pints of plasma his signs were stable, his pulse strong, and he ended any further argument by fluttering his good eye open and saying, “Where’re we?”

  “Heading home,” said Natalie, kneeling next to him. She and Jackson had exchanged places after the medic had checked Saul’s vital signs and announced that both of his legs had fallen asleep. Meeks had not appreciated the exchange and suggested that people who stood up in canoes and airplanes were crazy.

  “You’re going to be okay,” Natalie added, stroking Saul’s forehead. Saul nodded. “Feel a little funny,” he said. “That’s the morphine,” said Jackson, leaning back and taking Saul’s pulse.

  “Feels sort of good,” said Saul and seemed ready to drift away again. Suddenly he forced both eyes open and his voice was stronger. “The Oberst. He’s really dead?”

  “Yes,” said Natalie. “I saw him.”

  Saul took a ragged breath. “Barent?”

  “If he was on his yacht, he’s gone,” said Natalie. “The way we planned?”

  “Sort of,” said Natalie. “Nothing worked right, but Melanie came through in the end. I have no idea why. If she wasn’t lying, the last I heard she and the Oberst and Mr. Barent were getting along swimmingly.”

  Saul moved his swollen lips in a painful smile. “Barent eliminated Miss Sewell,” he said. “It may have irritated Melani
e.” He moved his head to frown directly at Natalie. “What are you two doing here? We never discussed your coming to the island.”

  Natalie shrugged. “Shall we take you back to the island and start over?” Saul closed his eyes and said something in Polish. “It’s hard to concentrate,” he added in slurred English. “Natalie, can we leave the last part of it? Deal with her later? She’s the worst of all of them, the most powerful. I think even Barent was afraid of her at the end. You can’t do it alone, Natalie.” His voice was trailing off into sleep. “It’s over, Natalie,” he mumbled. “We’ve won.”

  Natalie held his hand. When she felt him slide into sleep, she said softly, “No, it’s not over yet. Not quite.”

  They flew northwest toward the uncertain coast.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Charleston Tuesday,

  June 16, 1981

  With perfect navigation and a strong tailwind, they landed at Meek’s small airstrip north of Charleston forty-five minutes before sunrise. The reserve tank had registered empty for the last ten miles when they floated down for a perfect touchdown between the rows of marker lights.

  Saul did not awaken when they transferred him to a canvas stretcher Meeks had stored in the hangar. “We need a second vehicle,” said Natalie as the two men carried the sleeping psychiatrist from the plane. “Is that for sale?” she asked, nodding toward a twelve-year-old VW Microbus parked near Meeks’s new souped-up pickup.

  “My Electric Kool-Aid Express?” said Meeks. “I suppose so.”

  “How much?” asked Natalie. The ancient vehicle had sixties psychedelic designs showing through a faded green paint job, but it was the curtains on the windows and the fact that the rear seats were wide and long enough for the stretcher that she found most useful.

  “Five hundred?”

  “Sold,” said Natalie. While the men secured the stretcher on the long bench behind the driver’s seat, Natalie dug through the suitcases in the back of the station wagon and came out with the nine hundred dollars in twenties that had been hidden in Saul’s extra loafers. It was the last of their money. She transferred the suitcases and extra bags to the microbus.

  Jackson looked up from taking Saul’s blood pressure. “Why two cars?”

  “I want to get him to medical facilities as soon as possible,” she said. “Will it be too risky to drive him to Washington?”

  “Why Washington?”

  Natalie removed a manila folder from Saul’s briefcase. “There’s a letter here from . . . a relative of Saul’s. It explains enough to get him help at the Israeli Embassy. It’s been our emergency exit, so to speak. If we take him to a Charleston doctor or hospital, the gunshot wounds will get the police involved. We can’t risk it if we don’t have to.”

  Jackson crouched on his toes and nodded. He took Saul’s pulse. “Yeah, I think Washington’ll be all right if they can get him to good medical facilities quickly.”

  “They’ll take care of him at the embassy.”

  “He’ll need surgery, Nat.”

  “They have an operating room right there in the embassy.”

  “Yeah? That’s weird.” He made a gesture with both palms up. “Okay, so why don’t you come too?”

  “I want to pick up Catfish,” said Natalie. “We can swing by before leaving town to do that,” said Jackson. “I need to get rid of the C-four and electronic junk too,” she said. “You get going, Jackson, and I’ll join you at the embassy by this evening.”

  Jackson looked at her a long minute and nodded. They stepped out of the van and Meeks came up to join them. “No news about the revolution on the radio,” he said. “Isn’t this stuff timed to all start at once?”

  “Keep listening,” said Natalie.

  Meeks nodded and took the five hundred dollars from her. “The revolution keeps going this way, I may make a profit yet.”

  “Thanks for the ride,” said Natalie. They shook hands. “You three should go into a different line of business if you want to enjoy life after the revolution,” said Meeks. “Stay cool.” Whistling an indecipherable tune, he went into his trailer.

  “See you in Washington,” said Natalie, pausing by the door of the station wagon to shake hands with Jackson.

  He took her by the shoulders, pulled her close, and kissed her firmly on the lips. “You be careful, babe. There’s nothing you have to do to night that the three of us can’t do when Saul’s taken care of.”

  Natalie nodded but did not trust herself to speak. She drove quickly away from the airstrip and found the main road to Charleston.

  There were too many things to do while driving a car at high speed. On the front seat she arrayed the web belt with the C-4, the EEG monitor and electrodes, the hand radio, the Colt and two extra clips, and the tranquilizer gun with a box of darts. In the backseat were the extra electronic equipment and a blanket covering an ax they had bought the previous Friday. Natalie wondered what a traffic cop would make of all this if she got stopped for speeding.

  The night was fading into the dim, gray glow that her father had called a false dawn, but another thick cloud bank to the east kept it dark enough to keep all of the streetlights on. Natalie drove slowly through the streets of the Old Section, her heart pounding much too hard. She stopped half a block from the Fuller house and broke squelch on the radio, receiving no reply. Finally she triggered the transmit button and said, “Catfish? Are you there?” Nothing. After several minutes of this, she drove by the house but could see nothing in the alley across the street where Catfish was supposed to be waiting. She set the radio aside and hoped that he was asleep somewhere, or had gone hunting for them, or even had been arrested for loitering.

  The Fuller house and courtyard were dark under tall trees still dripping from the night’s storm. Except for a faint green glow through the shutters of the upstairs room.

  Natalie drove around the block slowly. Her heart was racing so quickly that it was physically painful. Her palms were sweaty and her hands felt too weak to make a fist. She was giddy from lack of sleep.

  It made no sense to go on alone. She should wait for Saul to get better, wait for Catfish and Jackson to help her come up with a plan. It made so much sense just to turn the station wagon around and to head for Washington . . . away from that dark house hulking there a hundred yards ahead with its faint green glow like phosphorescent fungus burning there in the dim reaches of some forest.

  Natalie let the car idle while she tried to slow her panicked breathing. She lowered her forehead to the cool steering wheel and forced her tired mind to think.

  She missed Rob Gentry. Rob would know what to do next.

  She thought that it was a sign of her fatigue that the tears flowed so easily. She sat up abruptly and wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand.

  So far, she thought, everyone had gone the extra mile in this nightmare except for Little Miss Natalie. Rob had done his part and was dead for his efforts. Saul had gone to the island alone . . . alone. . . . knowing there were five of the creatures there. Jack Cohen had died trying to help. Even Meeks and Jackson and Catfish ended up doing most of the work when Little Miss Natalie wanted it done.

  Somehow, deep in her heart, Natalie knew that Melanie Fuller would not be there if they delayed even a few hours. She might already be gone.

  Natalie gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles paled. She forced her tired mind over hurdles to analyze her motivations. Natalie knew that her own hunger for revenge had been blunted by time and events and the insanity of the past seven months. She was not the same woman who had stood helpless and lost outside a locked mortuary on a distant December Sunday, knowing her father’s body was inside and vowing revenge on his unknown murderer. Unlike Saul, she was no longer driven by a quest for unlikely justice.

  Natalie looked at the Fuller house half a block away and realized that the force that drove her now was closer to the imperative that had moved her to train to be a teacher. Leaving Melanie Fuller alive in the world was like running
from a school building while a deadly snake was loose among unsuspecting children.

  Natalie’s hands shook badly as she clipped on the clumsy web belt and attached the heavy C-4. The EEG monitor needed batteries replaced and she had a terrible minute when she remembered that she had left the replacements in one of the bags in the microbus. With clumsy fingers she broke open the CB radio and transferred its batteries to the EEG monitor.

  Two of the electrode tapes on the sensor filaments failed to stick and she let them dangle, clipping the trigger lead to the C-4 detonator. The prime detonator was electrical, but there was a mechanical timer backup and even a coiled fuse she and Saul had clipped to a thirty-second length. Tasting the bile of panic again, she patted her pockets, but the lighter she had carried around for so long must have been left on the island with the rest of the contents of her bag. Natalie rummaged in the glove compartment. Stuck between state maps was a single book of matches from a restaurant they had stopped at in Tulsa. None had been used. She stuck them in her pocket.

  Natalie glanced at the things on the seat beside her and shifted the wagon into gear while keeping her foot on the brake. Once, when she was about seven, a friend had double dared her to go off the high diving board while they were swimming at the new Municipal Pool. The springboard the friend had pointed to was the highest of six, ten feet above the next highest, on a tower reserved for adults who were serious divers. Natalie could barely swim. Nonetheless, she had immediately pulled herself out of the shallow end, walked confidently past a lifeguard who was too busy chatting with a teenage girl to take notice of a seven-year-old, climbed the seemingly endless ladder, walked out to the tip of the narrow board, and jumped toward a pool so far below her that it seemed to be shrunken by distance.