The three men rushed out of the store, passing Ruth back and forth between them like a screaming football. That was when Gabe finally moved, dropping his armful of groceries and hurrying out after them. They made it to the van, piled in, and screamed out of the market’s small parking lot, fishtailing dangerously over the icy winter street.
Gabe was screaming insanely, but knew he couldn’t help his daughter. They had walked to the market, and he had no way to follow after the van. Still screaming, he ran after them, fruitless though such a pursuit might be. It was his baby, his Ruth, and only death could keep him from following her.
That was when John appeared. He pulled his car up beside the coach, screaming "Get in!" and then hitting the accelerator before Gabe was completely inside the car.
Their pursuit took them high into the mountains. Neither man spoke, single-mindedly following the van through winding, icy roads that quickly became little more than trails. At last, the inevitable occurred: the van hit a patch of ice and rocketed off the road, smashing sideways into a tree. The windows shattered with the impact, and Gabe feared the worst as he and John stopped and ran from the car.
The door to the van opened when they were only a few yards away, and out popped two of the three men that had been in the vehicle. One of them had a gun, which he fired, three sharp reports cleaving the mountain air as cleanly as a razor.
Gabe felt himself lifted off the ground, and knew he had been shot. He also heard a popping noise and knew that one of the rounds had punctured one of John’s tires. He hit the icy ground hard, cold seeping instantly into his bones. He tried to stand, but found that the bullet had taken him in the thigh, breaking his leg and leaving him helpless to do more than watch and fight to keep from passing out.
John dove for cover as the gunfire opened up. He rolled, then came up suddenly in a bright flurry of snow that momentarily blinded the two druggies. Gabe couldn’t even follow the other man’s movements. John was like a man possessed, feinting and dodging with manic speed and precision as the two men – correctly seeing him as the only remaining threat – converged on him.
Gabe knew John only by reputation at the time. So he knew that he was generally regarded as a good guy, and knew that he had been to the Gulf. But that didn’t prepare him for what he saw. John destroyed the two addicts with a skill and artistry that was frightening. He twisted as the one with a gun snapped off a pair of quick shots. One of them grazed his leg, but John didn’t even slow down, gliding past the druggie’s arm and breaking it, then whipping his arm up in the same movement, smashing the guy’s nose through his skull and killing him instantly.
At the same time, John pulled the criminal’s gun out of his now nerveless fingers. Turning fluidly to the other man, who was rushing at him with a snow-frosted tree branch, John calmly put the final bullet in the revolver’s cylinder between the man’s eyes.
Then Gabe saw a burst of movement as the final addict burst out of the van. He jumped out, then fled into the woods. Gabe saw him holding something: Ruth. She was a rag doll, loose as a half-filled sack of autumn leaves.
John turned to look at Gabe. Gabe knew he was bleeding badly; that he might very well be dead within minutes. Still, he didn’t hesitate.
"Save her," he said. Or tried to. All that made it past his lips was a susurrant whisper. John understood what he was saying, though, and dashed off into the trees, crashing through the snow banks and leaving a bloody trail behind him.
Gabe managed to pull off his belt and bind it around his leg in a makeshift tourniquet. Then he passed out, lying in the snow beside two dead men.
When he awoke, it was two days later. He was in a hospital bed. Friends and family were hesitant to speak of what had happened, so only gradually did he manage to wring the details out of them.
John had followed the man holding Ruth to the summit of one of the mountains, finally ending his flight at a sheer drop-off of two thousand feet. The druggie had dropped the girl in the snow a few feet away, trying to lighten his burden to more easily escape from John, who followed him like a coyote on the trail of a sickly gazelle.
It took more work and prying to get out what happened next. But Gabe was as single-minded as John had been, and soon was in possession of the remainder of the facts.
Ruth was dead, her neck apparently snapped when the van hit the tree. John saw this in an instant, and lay her tenderly on her back, her bright eyes no longer alight with the fire of innocent youth, but dim and clouded with death. He crossed her small hands over her breast.
And then he literally took the drug addict apart. The sheriff found his remains at the summit, where every one of his bones had been snapped, rent, or literally twisted off. His jaw was the only thing unbroken, though it was racked open in a never-ending scream of pain.
John then returned to Gabe, holding Ruth’s body in his arms. Neither the van nor the car would ever run again – one bullet had taken out the tire of John’s car, another had sheared through the fuel lines and obliterated the engine block – so John carried both Gabe and Ruth down the mountain. He was met at the bottom by the sheriff and his deputies, who were only barely mobilizing to follow the criminals. After passing Gabe to them and seeing that someone would take care of both him and his daughter’s body, John at last fainted, loss of blood from his leg wound finally claiming his consciousness.
The doctor who informed Gabe of this last bit spoke in a hushed voice that was part regret, part awe. John’s lower leg had been broken by the bullet. Not shattered, but broken badly enough that he should not have been able to walk at all, let alone follow an able-bodied man up a steep mountain face, kill him, and then return down the mountain carrying not one but two other people.
Gabe took all this in quietly. His friends and family were clearly afraid he was going to react with hysterics, screaming at life’s unfairness and shaking his fist at the sky. He did not, however. Ruth was gone, but he would not sully her beautiful memory by becoming hateful. All he felt was a deep, abiding sorrow. And an equally deep, abiding love for this comparative stranger who had risked his all to come to Ruth’s aid.
Ruth was never very far from his thoughts. He cherished her memory, and every time he saw John it was all he could do not to embrace him and thank him for saving his life, and for trying to save his daughter’s. He had known from the time he heard what happened that he would do anything for John. He would risk any loss, and would sacrifice anything and everything at John’s merest request.
And that was why it was so unnerving that as John spoke, Gabe felt nothing but rage. Every clack of the balls on the pool table served only to heighten his anger, and every word John spoke was like a twisting knife, inflicting a psychic pain that Gabe found himself hard-pressed to hide.
The effort of quelling his feelings was making him shaky with tension and adrenaline. Had he not been so focused on controlling himself, Gabe would have wondered if he was going crazy. As it was, though, every tiny shard of energy he had was bent on maintaining control and an appearance of normality.
John seemed oblivious to his friend’s internal struggle, which was good. Gabe didn’t know why John shouldn’t see him struggling, he only knew he shouldn’t.
A thought came to his mind: Keep it secret.
And, on the heels of that, another thought: Keep what secret?
The question was too much for Gabe, and he forced it out of his mind. John took his shot, and for a moment it seemed as if everything would be all right. John put away the fourteen and then the ten, then missed an easy straight shot on the fifteen ball. Gabe dropped the four, then shanked his next, a two-ball combo off the cushion.
John lined up. "I can’t forget about him, Gabe," he whispered.
And with those words, the thundering rage that had hammered behind Gabe’s eyes like a tsunami wave against a dam overpowered him. The anger flowed over his balustrade of mental defenses, blinding him and changing the face of his thoughts wherever it coursed. The wash of vicious spite cleaned
his mental slate, stripping away the civilized habits and mores and exposing what lay below it. He felt himself – the person he thought of as himself – sinking away, disappearing as in a fog. Ruth’s face swam momentarily before his eyes, then it too sank into the mist.
And then he was gone. Gabe was gone.
Replaced.
***
John missed the shot, and when he straightened he at last noticed the anguish on Gabe’s face. It disappeared almost instantly, though, replaced by a strange blankness that was even more frightening. It was not the slack-jawed vacuousness of a mental patient. Rather, it was an utterly empty expression that reminded John of some kind of a machine, like a drill press or a heavy water sledge they used in the mines: quiet until it turned on, and then capable of incredible, frightening force.
Gabe spoke, and John recognized his friend’s voice, but at the same time there was something different about it, as though someone had taken Gabe’s timbre and tone and stripped it of all his vocal idiosyncrasies: a synthesized imitation of the real thing.
"Forget it, John," said Gabe. His eyes stared into John’s, boring searing holes into John’s brain. John stared back for a moment, then realized where he’d seen the look in his friend’s eyes before. Gabe didn’t look like a machine...he looked like a killer. It was the look of a sniper. Or one of the black ops assassins. Someone who was preparing to end another’s existence. Someone who had relinquished his hold on humanity, if only for a few seconds.
John dropped his eyes to the pool table, thinking. It seemed to him best to pretend he hadn’t seen the look on Gabe’s face. That frightening look.
He took his shot, his mind moving quickly. Almost in spite of himself, his old training asserted itself and John’s grip on the cue stick subtly changed. He was prepared to swing it like a club, or to use it to block an attack. He looked back at Gabe.
Gabe still looked the same: looked like Gabe, but not.
What’s happening? thought John.
He didn’t say that, though. What he said was, "You’re probably right. It’s my imagination." And he tried to put as much sincerity into those two sentences as he had put into any words he’d ever spoken.
It seemed to work. Gabe’s face relaxed. For a moment his friend looked puzzled, as though stepping into a familiar room whose furniture has all been moved to new positions. Then he grinned, and John’s heart slowed down a beat or two, coming somewhat closer to normal.
Gabe took his shot.
"When you going to see her?"
"Who?"
Gabe looked at him like he had just spoken utter nonsense. John relaxed slightly as he recognized his friend once more. Even so, he did not relinquish his grip on the stick.
"Franny, dim-bulb," said the coach.
"She gets in tomorrow?" John asked. Gabe nodded. "I’ll swing by her place tomorrow night, then. Show her the sights of Loston."
Gabriel laughed, his voice normal, seeming his usual self once again, as though what had just happened were nothing more than a bad dream on John’s part. A waking dream.
"Show her the sights of Loston, huh? That’s the first fifteen minutes of the date," said the coach. "What’ll you do after that?"
Gabe won the game during his next turn, and John left the bar. Gabe wanted to play a few more, but John begged off, saying he wanted to be rested for tomorrow evening. The reality of the situation was, he wanted to get away from his friend who was suddenly acting so strange. He needed to think.
He put his pool cue up in the rack, standing it next to the others, all lined up like steadfast wooden and aluminum soldiers, and stepped into the bar area. He waved goodnight to Casey, who nodded but didn’t stop polishing his bar.
John went to the front door, waving to a few people he knew in the bar, and then opened it to leave.
He almost bumped into the people entering: two men, two women. One man and one woman were laughing, apparently having a good night. The other two - a black woman and a stern older man - didn’t laugh. John had to suppress a shudder as he stepped past them. The older man’s eyes quickly roved up and down, taking in John’s appearance in an instant, before the party moved into the bar. The look unnerved him, and yet he seemed to have seen that look before.
He shrugged internally and stepped out of the bar. When he got in his Pathfinder, he realized what the look had meant.
He was casing me, thought John. He had seen that look, again in special forces training. How to rapidly assess a potential threat, noting bulges in clothing, physical prowess, and a host of other factors that could let a skilled observer know in a matter of seconds what dangers another person represented.
Why would he look like that?
Almost, he went back into the bar. To introduce himself, perhaps, and maybe get a bit of information from the man.
Almost. But instead he put his car into gear, and drove away.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
2:00 AM SUNDAY MORNING
Casey wanted to close up; wanted to go home and crawl into bed for five hours before coming back to get the bar ready for the Sunday lunch rush. The bar wasn’t a restaurant or even a grill, but Casey noticed a lot of people that came in to ask if he had anything to eat stayed for a drink or two, so he had started cooking burgers and sandwiches for some of his customers. It made a bit more work, and a slightly higher amount of paperwork to be filled out each year for the state health commission, but it more than paid for itself in extra profits. So now he had to get the bar opened earlier than he used to, and Sunday was a good business day on top of that. He wanted to rest up for it.
Unfortunately, one small group of people remained. They had come in early, and stayed the entire evening, though they’d only purchased one round of drinks each, and as far as Casey could see, those drinks were still full. He had thought more than once over the evening that they might be waiting for him to be alone - as he was now - to rob him.
He dismissed the thought, though. He’d been robbed twice, and both times it had been people with a certain frightened, jittery look. These people didn’t have that look. They sat utterly calm, like a deep pool of water on a still summer day.
At the same time, though, it occurred to Casey that even calm waters had been known to hide sharks.
Time to close up, he decided. He’d get rid of his guests - nicely, of course, but firmly - and go home for forty winks. Maybe for forty thousand. He told himself again that he wasn’t worried, but he put his hand below the bar, where a shotgun - a sawed-off double barrelful of lead - hung on a spring-pivot. In a split-second he could aim and shoot it right through the bar, if necessary. Anything he pointed at, he would hit. And anything he hit would go down and stay down.
Tal Johnson, Loston’s sheriff, had given Casey the shotgun after the second robbery attempt. He’d handed it over, whispering, "I never saw this," when Casey got out of the hospital, where he had recuperated from a shot that glanced across his clavicle, missing his neck and head by inches.
Casey had laughed at the melodrama at the time, enjoying the sheriff’s obvious pleasure at Loston’s only chance to engage in vigilante cloak and dagger stuff. But now he was glad to have the gun.
"Folks," he said, making sure his voice was chipper, cheery, the last kind of voice in the world you’d want to hear angry. "We’re closing up, I’m afraid."
Surprisingly, the answer to his statement came from the oldest of the group, a late middle-aged man who’d done nothing but case the bar out the whole time they’d been there. It seemed like he was looking for something. Or someone. Casey hoped it wasn’t him, as the man wore a scowl more dark and impenetrable than the darkest night in the mountains.
That was why it was a bit of a shock when the man cracked a wide smile and said, "Oh, it’s late. Terribly sorry, friend. We’ve been...traveling. It felt good just to sit down a while, and I guess we lost track of the time in your wonderful place here."
Casey smiled. His hand re
mained on the gun, but he was as susceptible to flattery as any proud parent. "Thanks for the compliment. She’s a great place."
"Indeed," said the man. He stood, and the others followed suit. He walked to the bar and his hand went to an inner pocket.
Casey tensed, but the man withdrew a billfold, nothing more.
"How much do we owe you?"
"Four drinks, twelve dollars."
The man held out a twenty. "Here you go. If you can tell us of a good motel around here, you can keep the change."
Casey shook his head. "Sorry, I’ll have to give you eight back. Loston doesn’t get many tourists. Hardly any new move-ins, either. The nearest motel’s about three hours west of here."
"Oh." The man’s expression fell and Casey felt sorry for him. Driving in the middle of the night wasn’t any fun after a long day of traveling.
"Sorry, friend," said Casey. He took the twenty and made change one-handed, a move he’d practiced many times. He knew it looked smooth and that the four watching would be unaware he kept his right hand below the bar. Unless they were up to no good, in which case the fear that he had something down there might keep them in line.
He handed the man his change. The man took it, laying the five down on the bar in front of Casey. "Well, thanks anyway." He pocketed the remaining three and then pulled out a gun.
Casey would have shot him, would have punched a hole the size of a serving tray right through the man, except the guy moved so smoothly. He didn’t yank his gun out of a holster, trembling, as any other gunman might have done. He drew it out, not like a quick-draw, but like he was languidly drawing up water from a fresh artesian well. So Casey didn’t react nervously, either, automatically pulling the trigger and blowing the guy straight to hell in two or more pieces. The guy flowed, and Casey was stuck somewhere between awe and surprise during the half a second he could have done something. Then the moment was gone and the man who stared at him from behind a gun was in charge, and Casey knew it.
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