Deadfall

by Robert Liparulo

  This image she held on to. She locked it down tight, because it was the only thing that mattered.

  They were standing against the wall beside the door, deep in shadow. She lowered her hands, looked to the door, then at Terry.

  “We have to go get him. And your friend.”

  “We will. I promise.” He held up the gun the girl had dropped. “But there are only two unspent rounds in here, and I don’t think that’ll do it.”

  “It has to.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I want to make sure Hutch is safe, and I would do the same for Dillon, even if Hutch weren’t with him, but we’ve got to do it right. Going in guns blazing would just get us killed, especially since our guns don’t have enough bullets to blaze. Then who’s going to make sure Hutch and Dillon are safe?”

  She knew he was right, but she couldn’t stand the thought of Dillon back with those creeps. Her not being with him made it so much worse.

  “What do you suggest?” she asked.

  “We have a friend hiding in the next block. Let’s get him and put our heads together.”

  She nodded.What else could she do?

  Terry moved to the corner and peered around. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

  She followed him across the street to a building that was ablaze. She knew it well.Tom’s RCMP office was one of that building’s five tenants.That was as much as she thought about Tom at that moment. She had pushed him aside. She had to. If she gave in to even a single memory, there would be a flood and she would drown. She would be no good to herself. No good to Dillon.

  “Where’s your friend?” she said.

  Terry surveyed the area. “I don’t know. Phil!” he whispered harshly. “Phil!” He turned to her. “You know the area. Where might he have gone to hide, but still see us when we came for him?”

  She shook her head. “Could be anywhere. Why did he stay here when you and Hutch came over to the back of the community center?”

  Terry frowned. “I think he just got scared. Didn’t follow us when we ran.”

  She thought about it. “If he was afraid, he could have gone anywhere, done anything.You know? I’m angry and worried sick about Dillon, and a minute ago I was ready to walk into the bad guys’ camp to get him. A part of me still wants to.That’s not rational. Fear does that to people too. It’s hard to predict what scared people will do.” She paused. “Terry, don’t count on finding him. He’ll have to find us.”

  “He mentioned wanting to get to another town. He thought it was crazy to go up against people with a weapon like what Declan has, against people able to make an entire town disappear.”

  She shook her head. “If he headed out for Fond-du-Lac or Black Lake, he’s not going to make it.They’re too far. This time of year, the only way is by boat. I heard Declan say they had the waterway covered. Is your friend good in the wild? Can he survive cold nights?”

  “No,” Terry said heavily, as if hearing Phil was already dead. “That’s not Phil.”

  “Well . . . I hope he realizes that about himself.” She took in the shadows around them. “Maybe he’s here somewhere. Could be waiting for you at a safer place.”

  Her eyes settled on a house just beyond the parking lot that served the now-burning building. It was the Jorgensens’ home. She had taught their two children in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Kyle was now an eighth grader, becoming strong and already talking about nailing down a hockey scholarship to the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Heather was in the sixth grade under the tutelage of Mrs. Johnson. Even so, she had invited Laura to her twelfth birthday party less than a month ago. It had been in the backyard of that house. Festooned with streamers and balloons and a SpongeBob piñata.

  Heather had laughed, saying the piñata was perfect not because she liked the cartoon sea sponge, but because she absolutely did not. She delighted at the idea of beating it with a broom handle until poor Bob broke open and everybody ate his candy guts. Dillon, who thought SpongeBob was the Second Coming, stormed off and refused to participate in the savagery. But all of them had enjoyed the cake, which was, of course, in the shape of a caribou.The kids giggled and laughed, yelled and screamed for hours.

  Laura remembered thinking that twelve had been a good year for her, and Heather was kicking hers off in style. Now the house was dark. Though abandoned only two days, to Laura it felt ancient and dilapidated and full of ghosts.

  She had seen Heather, Kyle, and their parents, Hans and Mari, in the gymnasium with the other captives. They had been in a far corner. Mari had sat on a cot, her son and husband on each side.They’d seemed to be consoling her. She’d had her face in her hands, a crumpled tissue sticking out one side. Heather had stood a few paces away, looking miserable and confused. When she had spotted Laura, her face hadn’t changed, but she’d given her a little wave.

  Declan had captured more than people—he had taken their pride and their spirit. He had demonstrated to children that their parents could not protect them. He had shown the adults that their nightmares were pleasant dreams compared to the real world. Each person in that gymnasium would never be the same. If they were anything like Laura, they would never again believe that the hearth’s fire would always keep out the cold; that a mother’s care made all things better; that the arms around you could not be torn away because love conquered all.

  Terry touched her shoulder and she realized he had said something. “Sorry . . . ?”

  Terry leaned closer. “Are you okay?”

  She blinked, shook off the reverie. “I was just thinking . . .”

  “I mean . . .” He pointed at her face. “You have a nasty bruise, and your lip’s bleeding.”

  She touched her lip, and it stung. But her fingertips felt worse. She looked at them and remembered the hours of working the shelving brace loose. She turned her hand over. Her knuckles also glistened with congealing blood.

  “Are all the women up here so tough?”Terry said with a sideways smile.

  “You mean the fight? That was fun. Really. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed pounding on that little girl.”

  Terry actually laughed out loud. He covered his mouth and looked around. “I can’t say that I would’ve got the same thrill, not with her. But those other guys . . .” His face hardened and he shook his head. After a moment he said, “We have to find a place for the night. Do you know where we can go?”

  “As long as you don’t mind keeping off the lights.”

  “I just need to catch some shut-eye.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll find Dillon, Hutch, and Phil,”Terry said.

  “Yeah.” She glanced back toward the community center. “Tomorrow.”

  Phil,s shoulder hit a tree, spinning him. He fell to his knees on the moss- and needle-covered ground. Momentum pushed him onto his side, and he rolled down a short incline, crushing dead twigs and jarring his ribs against a rock. He felt his glasses slip away. He lifted himself up on all fours and stopped. He pulled in a deep breath, heaved it out . . . again . . . and again. He was leaking from his eyes and nose and mouth, just letting the stuff drop from his face to the earth.

  He was deep in the woods, where only a handful of bright spots like scattered coins proved the moon’s presence somewhere above the trees. His eyes were open to the blackness, but superimposed over everything was the image of a flash of rippling green light slicing down from the sky. It was burned not into his retinas, but into his soul. Hutch and Terry had darted across the dirt road to the rear of the big building Hutch had called a recreational center. It had taken Phil a few minutes to free himself from the panic that had seized him. He’d just stepped from the shadows when the light flashed, cracking the air like a bullwhip. A geyser of dirt and debris had risen over the roofline of the rec center.

  And he had run. God help him, he had turned and run . . . back past the rear of the burning retail building, behind the Elks Lodge and the town physician’s house, all the way t
o the school. There he had angled left and stumbled and loped past the dead houses, dark as tombs. He had not stopped, not until now, well beyond the town, into the province of trees with branches like hands and animals he had only seen in zoos.

  They had to be dead, Hutch and Terry. The power of that thing, that weapon . . . That Declan guy, the one who controlled it, somehow he had known where to aim it, had known where they were.

  Fifty paces into his retreat, Phil had thought, What if they’re not dead? What if they’re injured and need help? But he could not bear to see his friends mangled. His fear of seeing them like that had been greater than his desire to help. No, that wasn’t right: his fear had been greater than his belief that they could have survived.

  His respiration slowed. He leaned back to sit on his heels. He ran a sleeve across the lower half of his face, then squeegeed the tears away from his eyes with his finger. A cursory glance around failed to locate his glasses. In the distance a wolf howled, followed by a chorus of scattered dogs, closer. Beyond a few nearby trees, he could not make out the black trunks, branches, needles from the spaces between them. Dark: the night, his heart.

  He knew where he was. Sort of. He had gone west out of town, toward the First Nation village of Fond-du-Lac. Black Lake lay in the opposite direction, east. The Fond du Lac River was south. To the north were nothing but the hills, rivers, and forests where they had camped. Hutch had insisted neither neighboring town was accessible on foot. But what choice did he have? He had to try to get to one of them, and since he was already heading in that direction, he supposed it would be Fond-du-Lac.

  He returned to his hands and knees, patting the ground for his glasses.

  One foot in front of the other, he thought. One step at a time.How bad could it be? Survival would drive him on. That and the fire kindled inside him, hot for revenge. What were the cold and the terrain and the miles next to a man’s will to live and to avenge his friends? He could do it. He would do it.

  But first he had to find his glasses.

  29

  Hutch woke to the gentle chiming of his watch. He started, and his head smacked against something. His neck was twisted at an awkward angle. Then he remembered where he was. Frantically he reached for his watch to turn off the alarm. He listened for voices, for footsteps. Nothing but the slow, deep breathing of Dillon, facing him in the cabnet. The air was humid with the odor of stale breath. It was four in the morning.Yesterday at this time he had crawled over Phil and pushed out of the tent to begin the hunt, which had turned into a hunt for him.

  Who said, “What a difference a day makes”? David would have challenged him to know. He smiled, thinking of Terry’s quip the evening they had arrived: “The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.” And suddenly he remembered who’d said that: W. Somerset Maugham. David would have been proud.

  His watch was set to chime at the same hour every day unless he manually changed that function. He had not intended for it to go off this morning; only a fool would hide in the den of his enemies and set an alarm clock. But he was glad it had awakened him (and no others), for now was the ideal time to make his escape.

  The freaks had left the break room fluorescents on again, which was fine by him. No crashing over chairs or risking turning on a light to get out of here. He believed Declan’s gang would all be asleep. Bad would have required care well into the night, and maybe Julian, depending on how seriously Laura had brained him.These guys were punks more used to partying till dawn than rising at that hour. He couldn’t imagine Declan setting up a twenty-four-hour watch or one of his stooges actually staying awake if he did.

  Dillon had slipped lower in his sleep. Scrunched now, with his chin on his chest, his legs had stretched out toward Hutch. One crossed Hutch’s lap, and the other foot was propped against Hutch’s chest. Hutch would have climbed out and stretched before waking Dillon, but now the boy would have to get out first. Gently, he removed Dillon’s foot from his chest and leaned forward. His head was still bent sideways, and he wasn’t looking forward to straightening it against the cramp that had surely set in. He reached out to tap Dillon on the chest but thought better of it. He would wake this child the way he had often woken his own son, Logan. As a father would. Dillon deserved at least that much.

  Softly, he brushed the bangs off the boy’s forehead. He ran his big hand over his head and down the side of his face. Dillon stirred. He had escaped this place once already and would have to do it again. Hutch felt for him. He brushed the boy’s head again, then his face. Dillon’s eyes fluttered. He licked his lips, swallowed. His eyes opened and found Hutch. Instant fear. Bafflement.

  “Good morning, Dillon,” Hutch said quietly. “It’s me, Hutch, from last night. Remember?”

  Dillon scowled but nodded. “Where’s my mom?”

  “We’re going to go to her. Are you ready?”

  “I’m hungry.” He pushed his lips together, looked embarrassed. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Hutch smiled. “I do too, and I’m starving. After we get out of here, we’ll find some food and a bathroom. Can you wait that long?”

  Dillon nodded.

  “Remember, the bad guys are really close. Let’s not wake them up. It’ll be dark for another two hours, so it’s a good time to skedaddle, huh?” He raised his eyebrows, and the boy nodded again.

  Hutch pushed open the cabinet doors; they both squinted against the brightness. After a moment, Hutch said, “You first.”

  He helped Dillon maneuver his legs out and covered Dillon’s head as he stooped through the opening, the way a cop would guide a prisoner under the threshold of cruiser’s back door. Dillon stood, wincing at the aches in his body.

  Hutch was about four times older and figured his aches would be at least that many times worse. As Dillon had done, he swung his legs out first, then slid out of the cabinet much less gracefully. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and slowly, painfully stood. He required assistance from the counter, and Dillon stepped up to hold him. He arched backward and stretched each leg in turn. He rotated his shoulders and only then realized his head was still cocked sideways. It refused to obey his command to straighten. He seized it in both hands and forced it up, hearing tendons pop as he did. That he had to remain silent during this entire process seemed to make the cramped muscles and stiff joints more cramped and stiff.

  He resisted the compulsion to leave that very second, to slip from the dragon’s lair with nothing but his and Dillon’s lives. His right leg tingled, not fully asleep but definitely dozing. He felt that blood had been pressed out of major muscle groups by the confines of the cabinet. While he could walk and move, his mobility felt inhibited, as though he had been wrapped in tight bandages from head to toe. Mummified, he could not do his best. If ever he had to be limber and fast, it would be now, in escaping from Declan’s vile presence. Dillon too. The young are naturally resilient, and his small body had not needed to contort as dramatically as had Hutch’s in the cabinet, but his muscles must surely ache for the flatness and softness of a mattress.

  “Stretch out,” he whispered to Dillon. “Shake out your arms and legs, stretch your muscles.”

  Unsure, Dillon followed Hutch’s lead, shaking each hand as though eliminating water from it, then doing the same with their legs. Inexplicably, Dillon smiled. A big grin that showed his Chiclet front teeth and just-cutting-the-gums incisors. It did more to revitalize Hutch than all the stretching and bending.

  “What?” Hutch whispered.

  Dillon shook his head.

  “No, really—what?”

  Dillon glanced toward the open door, then stepped closer to Hutch, who leaned down. Quietly Dillon sang, “You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about.”

  Hutch almost laughed out loud. He gave Dillon’s shoulder a squeeze and nodded. “Kinda silly, huh?”

  Dillon was too polite to respond.

  Hutch said, “Ready to go?�
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  Dillon made his eyes big and nodded as if to say, Boy, I thought you’d never ask.

  Hutch retrieved his bow from the cabinet. He gave Dillon a thumbs-up, and Dillon returned it. In certain occupations and sports that required silent communication, such as SWAT operations, scuba diving, and hunting, hand signals were always acknowledged. Hutch had found that people who didn’t participate in these activities generally smiled or nodded in reply.

  “Do you hunt?” he asked.

  “A little.”

  Hutch wasn’t sure precisely how this information would help, but he thought it would. He might expect more of the boy in terms of stealth or spotting than he otherwise would have, which in turn would affect the decisions he made as they escaped—and, if it came to it, ran for their lives.

  Working with someone whose strengths and weaknesses were unknown to you was always a disadvantage. He’d spoken to cops with new partners. They said that when facing a life-or-death situation, they would bear the brunt of the responsibility of their own safety, their partner’s safety, and the outcome of the operation. By doing so, they might even compromise all of those objectives, since no one could do everything. Whereas if they could count on skills they knew their partner possessed, they could focus on their own strengths, and synergistically the two together performed immeasurably better than the two apart.

  Dillon was only a child, and regardless of how well he knew the boy, Hutch would take responsibility for his safety and do everything he could to carry their collective weight. But imagine if he discovered that Dillon was a tae kwon do master or a marksman or could walk through walls.That might change things a bit. As it was, he had been concerned about Dillon’s ability to move quietly. If his mother or father had taken him hunting, even once, Dillon would have learned the value of silence and patience and choosing a route that accommodated stealth over speed. Unfounded or not, it made him feel better about sneaking out of this place without waking the sleeping ogres.

  “One more thing,” Hutch whispered. Lowering himself to sit on the floor, he gestured for Dillon to do the same. Hutch unlaced his right boot and tugged it off; his sock followed. He gestured toward the child’s feet, and Dillon yanked off his sneaker then his sock. Hutch replaced his boot over his bare skin and then began stretching his sock over his boot.