Ransom X

by a b

  She imagined that soon a rock would pierce the bottom of their sled and open it like a can opener. Then the percussion would go from bruised to bloody. She looked at Wagner struggling, with her bonds, and she found a growing curiosity with death. The sled flipped up again, catching her on the cheek, another cold metallic slap in the face.

  “I want it to be over,” played over and over in her mind. She was about to get her wish.

  *****

  Legacy raced out of the central building and into the flat parking area. He saw the taillights of the bikes winking in the distance like the faraway advertising of grief and defeat, only 9.99 plus shipping and handling.

  “Act now!” he thought, the irony of the moment stored in a compartment of his brain for the retelling of the story.

  But there was something standing between him and immediate action. Another prowler entered the pool of light created by the overhead lamp. The snarling copy of the one he’d dispatched inside. It waited on the edge of the light, uncertain of what to do next. Legacy realized that it was the blood of his partner that was making him so cautious. “He must smell it on me,” he thought.

  Legacy didn’t have time to play games. Decisive action led to a gambit that was all or nothing. He planted his feet in a wide stance, and then began to walk toward the beast. It was a walk and a force of nature all at the same time. No hesitation, no compromise, he approached with the confidence of death on the march, clicking off the distance that separated them.

  The dog began to act anxiously as Legacy continued forward. It skittered left then right – the uncertainty made the creature look like it was limping. Then suddenly something caught Legacy’s attention, the dog seemed to be staring at a fixed point behind him, but as he drew closer he realized that the animal’s eyes were not gazing at something behind him, rather they were riveting deeply into his own.

  A gust of wind came up from behind him and something, a scent or possibly the dead chill of Legacy’s eyes made the difference. The dog fled into the night, vanishing silently back into the shadows. Then, a safe distance away, an almost unearthly howl brushed the wind. It was a vast, empty sound that lasted only a moment then decayed so slowly that it almost never seemed to end.

  Legacy decided later that it wasn’t fear that had ruled their confrontation, as he’d originally thought. It was uncertainty, if the dog had known either that it was going to win or lose the fight it would have engaged, that’s what it had been trained to do. But the commodity that Legacy presented was so unnatural that it brought the dog to an understanding of his foe. The shattered cry that accompanied this understanding could have been for his dead partner or it could have been the harmonic that it felt from that single moment of connection to the crazed human. Legacy felt the sound echo through the night and he knew where the almost spectral sound had originated.

  He knew that it was simple animal fear that drove the dog into the night. But for a long time after that, long after he’d forgotten his own reassuring internal account of the evening, he wondered what was located far behind his own eyes, deep inside, that could be so terrifying.

  He turned his attention to the trail. There was something odd about the way one of the taillights flickered. A deep wide imprint led to the parking area. Blade was dragging something behind his bike. Legacy bent down, seeing something glint in the lamplight. It was sapphire green with glittering specks on one side, yellow ivory on the other. A chip from a painted toenail.

  For one gut wrenching moment he thought that the cargo they dragged away must be bodies, but his mind was jumping forward in an annoying way. It had nothing to do with the fact that Wagner hadn’t been accounted for.

  Legacy’s ranger training, a fog in the backdrop of his life, returned in a split second. It didn’t need to be called upon, it was simply there. His body moved with silent, efficient speed to the end of the driveway. The pattern was rigid, like one of the bikes was dragging a sled, but who was on it? Laura would be dead in the killing room if Blade had access to her. Laura wasn’t a passenger.

  It could be Darci, or Wagner, or both.

  He gazed at his own car sitting in the camp parking lot, worthless for pursuit in this rough terrain. The ruts in the road could easily be avoided along a two-tire line, and these bikers probably knew them like the ridges of the handgrips on their bikes. An unconscious map that allowed them to glide down the mountain and not bump and scrape every turn.

  Legacy took only a moment to dismiss the idea of driving – he followed the sled path back to a building that must have served as a kennel. The smell of gunpowder, thin in the air, gave him the chills. Someone had spent rounds in this room, and he expected neither of the parties who carried firearms to miss their target. The lack of blood hardly comforted him – not only because Legacy would only know comfort if it hit him so hard that it collapsed a lung – also because his ability to process comfort had shut down, and it would remain so until Wagner was safe.

  An observer – which strangely enough there was one, might have thought Legacy’s behavior to be closely related to the dogs that patrolled the compound.

  He covered the field in deft strides. He never stopped for long, his legs propelling him efficiently to the next piece of information, confident that his mind would catch up with his stride during the journey. It was the way that Legacy worked, it was the reason he was such a valuable asset in the field. These moments, piecing together the special identities, relationships and actions of those who stood on this ground in the minutes, hours and years before. He had such a history of the place by the time he found Darci and Wagner’s trail into the woods that he could see the drop-off points for the campers, smell the digestion of an antique septic system in the far lot, and more importantly, he knew that there must be a shortcut down to the bar.

  This was once an active church teen camp after all; there couldn’t be a more traveled route away from this place. Rebellion is the most brutally conformist action of the modern Methodist teen, he thought with a wry smile. It didn’t matter that later he found out that they were Presbyterians – the trail to the bar was still there.

  Wagner was the woman who’d left the lipstick mark on that burning cigarette in the bar. The trail bypassed the long arching dirt road with a rickety bridge over the dry riverbed, but he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. His pace quickened, sensing that his mind was about to lay in a destination. And then there it was, a plan he may have rejected on merit, but one that his body adopted without question. Wagner had that effect on people – even him. If there was any chance of recovering Wagner from the hands of that madman, it lay in a little madness of his own.

  He let the glow of the building soak into his eyes for a moment longer. Something bothered him about the trailers parked in lines beside the central building. He saw the blast heaters sticking out from the tops, one of the fans churning full blast, rattling hot air into the car below. Why was that one on full and the others hummed at a constant low whirr? Before the question fully formed, he knew the answer. He paused for a moment to scan the ridge for whoever had left the door open.

  *****

  Blade didn’t plunge into the darkness at his normal death wish pace. He knew that if the sled flipped, he’d lose the cargo, and there was no time to reload. There was no reason to have an insurance policy that had expired. His wit was so delightful, it roused his boundless mind into life, a feeling he had every time he felt the power of death coursing through his blood. Like the explosive power of the fuel that charged spitfire into the chambers beneath him, warming his loins and pushing him forward. This was the place where he created his own mythology with him at the center, a monster in a theology that served only his needs and damned all those around him. Sometimes, just for the sin of looking at him.

  A light flashed in his side mirror, Mac was pulling in front. He always wanted to take the bridge first, its rickety slats were ready to pop and crackle into dust and the fat man liked to practically fly over them. Normally he w
ould have chased him down and run him off the road for the insult – but tonight in this black garden, revenge could be cooled, saved for later.

  Another light flashed across the road, and at first glance, it looked like a different one entirely.

  The full weight of Mac’s cycle crashed into his, and the angle of contact was the most unfortunate decision of what would prove to be the very short life of the instigator. If Mac had chosen an angle less sharp, their fuel tanks would have collided, BOOM, if he’d approached from the back the force would have shifted into Blade’s bike like a pool cue knocking into a ball, and they would have found Blade’s bike on the valley floor far below. Perhaps because he’d never listened during the two-day physics course that made up his remedial science course that he failed before leaving reform school, he’d played crossing guard unintentionally, coming in at almost a right angle and, in effect, having Blade crash into him.

  The concussion knocked the wind out of Blade and dug so deep into the layers of Mac’s protective blubber that three of Mac’s ribs cracked inward with the blow, then split outward as the wheel rim withdrew, leaving a powerful tissue explosion away from the body that carried the bones like the hinge on saloon doors. The world spun, colors traced every light and soon every star was the tip of a radiant fireworks explosion, every twig was the crackle of the dying flame.

  The sled holding Wagner and Darci came to rest on Mac’s legs, and as he pushed himself upward it was like Darci had just bounced jubilantly into his lap. The violent jolt had pulled the handcuffs off of her wrists leaving raw, red skin circling her pale white hands like bracelets. Mac grabbed Darci into his arms, her head bobbing with what looked to be sobs – but he didn’t seem to notice. It was as if, in his head, Mac had somehow turned sad into happy, sobs into gurgles of laughter. There she was, in his arms like the end of some kind of romantic movie, moonlight cradling their embrace from a lover’s lazy crescent.

  Blade stirred, stood, smiled. He’d thought that he’d emptied the fat man of everything that was his. There was something left, what a nice surprise. Blade couldn’t resist the opportunity to inflict more than just the brief pain of death. He approached slowly, letting the embrace warm them before his cold deadly fingers descended. He felt the anger in him rise up with each fresh wave of pain planting on his left leg. It wasn’t broken, but it was bent. He scuffed the trail kicking at the gravel. The texture of the road bothered him, but what of it? He couldn’t control everything, only life and death, the two least unique properties of any creature on earth.

  He swung his arm in a wide arc across his body. When he pulled it back to his side, a dagger rested comfortably in his palm, he did the second arm with less flair. He had garnered everyone’s attention with the first blade drawn. The pain of Blade’s wound punctuated his words.

  “Your fucking bitch just GOT you killed Mac,” Mac didn’t look up, still staring with delight into Darci’s eyes, and Blade clicked his teeth, “maybe I should kill her first.”

  Blade watched as Darci’s pale blue eyes flashed with the color of steel and her skin flushed. He continued in a mock country twang “THAT got someone’s fuckin‘ at-TEN-tion.”

  He was only steps away when Mac somehow lifted the sled off of his legs and brought it up to his chest. It looked for a moment like he was going to use it as a weapon. Blade backed up a step, planting firmly on his injured leg and almost tumbling to the ground.

  Mac pulled the sled up onto his chest, and leaned in and gave Darci a kiss on the forehead. He either couldn’t speak or he had nothing to say, abruptly the sled dropped to the ground. Mac slouched, all of his strength gone.

  Blade sprang forward, with his arm raised high. He saw that look on Darci’s face as his knee pushed into her stomach – it was a delightful mix of hatred and fear. Somehow she engaged every muscle in her body and rolled Blade’s knee from her sternum. Clank. The knife came down glancing off of the sled, inches from her throat. He was impressed. He’d been in the presence of many grown men unable to come up with that kind of strength, even in defense of their own lives. Blade let his eyebrows find a sarcastic arch, “I’m so disappointed in you. Look at the mess you’ve made, and here I am trying to clean it up – tisk tisk tisk.” The finger he used to gesture for shame then raised to his lips, “Shhhhh.

  Blade let the tip of his knife wander over all of Darci’s piercings. Nose, ear, eyebrow, lip then lower to the nipples, he tapped on her shirt. The clink of metal confirmed it. “Why didn’t you let me do those? Or are there more prizes down below?”

  The tip of his knife went down past her belly button and skidded along the zipper of Darci’s pants. “Zzzzzip.” Blade watched her eyes widen thinking it was his effect on her until he felt the blow to his forehead. An open-handed blow from Mac sent Blade reeling, he back-pedaled several paces until his footing became more steady. A little more force might have sent him over the edge. He retaliated instantly throwing the blade in his left hand at Darci.

  Mac again came to the rescue rolling his frame over Darci, basically becoming a shield for her. The point planted in Mac’s back, and then Blade walked deliberately over to retrieve it. “It’s like the first kiss isn’t it? Let’s make out, you slut.”

  Mac’s skin was pierced again and again, but he did not move. Blade’s arms swung in efficient quick strokes, but he was getting tired. Sweat beaded on his brow. Every time he tried to move Mac, he met resistance, even though there were incisions clustered around every main organ accessible from four inches beneath the skin of his back.

  Blade turned away and paced in the misshapen light of a headlight now ajar, partially masked by the chrome blinder, shining more upward and to the side than forward. Blade didn’t need this detour, felt like leaving them. He knew he couldn’t pull the extra weight that Mac added to the sled, especially with the dubious looking back wheel, which spun with the spokes moving closer, then farther away in a single rotation. Blade looked back at the man clutching the girl beneath him. He began to wonder if the anatomy of grotesque obesity somehow protected Mac by shifting all of his organs forward into his belly when attacked from behind. It was the only plausible way that Mac was still breathing. This whole situation was unacceptable. He glared at Vorest, who straddled his bike ten yards down the trail, waiting for whoever won to join him. Blade picked up a heavy rock with the intention of lowering the deathblow onto his dear friend. Then, suddenly, his problem was solved.

  Mac must have stored up all that he had left in the short break from being a human pincushion. One might say he did it, but they’d be wrong, it must have been adrenaline that heaved his body from the sled and set it into motion. He and Darci simply began to roll. They rolled until they reached the place where the road fell sharply off and the slope continued all the way down to a valley of trees below. Mac made the edge on the bottom and then unhesitatingly dropped off the world. Darci disappeared from view an instant later. Her eyes, pressed close, stubbornly fixed on Mac’s – knowing that her final image of the world was coming soon, and she’d be damned if that last iris movement were only filled with her tears. The breath that she expelled so close to his lips would be mixed with his.

  “Saved me the fucking trouble.” Blade shouted after them, it was a fitting eulogy. Vorest nodded from his bike.

  Blade looked around the glittering carnage that comprised the wreck and the blood soaked killing zone and made a painful observation. “Where is the agent?”

  Chapter 65 Short Cut

  Legacy swung into the driver’s seat of his unmarked government car and decided that it looked a little too clean, and that it could use a little character.

  He didn’t head for the exit; instead he wove through the buildings to the back of the compound. Then, passing the kennel, his route became a vector – across the clearing and hitting the brush at full speed.

  Branches scratched every side of the car as it scraped over a long fallen tree trunk. There was a very tenuous relationship with the footpath, in only nominal co
ntact with all four wheels below. Legacy saw the glint of metal in front of the car and then a sheer drop off. He plunged over the edge, finding steps beneath half of the car and precariously angled tree roots under the other.

  It was like half of the car was on a hydraulic lift and the other was in quicksand. If it were physically possible for two sides of a Ford to travel at different speeds, this would be the proving ground. Only the initial velocity gave Legacy any control over the vehicle.

  Then, suddenly, the stairs were gone and the front of the car crashed into the soft, level ground like a cigarette being extinguished. He’d lost a tire in the front, or maybe it was just flat, and the engine had crept almost a full inch closer to the cabin. The plastic covers had popped off of the air conditioning vents as the ducts had migrated along the floor. The car slowed, but kept moving along the crude, narrow path.