That bullet could have hit any of them. Mort doubted the shooter had aimed for the child purposely. Most likely, he (or she) was simply shooting at the Mercedes-Benz, trying to take out a wheel or maybe the radiator. Dongmei was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Mort’s current predicament was a little more explicable. After the sniper killed Dongmei, Dao-ming lost control of the Mercedes, putting it into the ditch. Mort had jumped out with his rifle, anger overriding his natural cautiousness. He meant to shoot the sniper before the murderer could hurt any more of his companions. He’d spotted movement in one of the buildings, sighted in on their ambusher, but the other man had fired first.
So much for being a hero! Bullets bounced off Superman. Mort Lesser... not so much.
Judging by the amount of blood pulsing from the hole in his pants, the bullet had severed an artery, too.
Mort tried to poke his finger in the hole. He knew he needed to stem the flow of blood somehow.
It was not one of his better ideas. The pain felt like someone had jammed a red hot poker in his leg. He jerked his finger away, gritting his teeth. Black spots danced in his vision.
“Hang on, Mort!” Pete yelled from the backseat of the Mercedes. Mort’s friend was trying to extricate himself from Dao-ming and Dongmei. He looked almost comical, the whites of his eyes staring out round and white from the middle of his gore-splattered face. Pete looked like Sissy Spacek in that old Stephen King movie Carrie, right after her high school tormentors splashed a bucket of pig blood on her at the prom.
The world was going dim and distant. Mort pushed himself up on his palms, tried to shout back, “Don’t worry about me. Just get out of here.” He opened his mouth to speak, but his lips and tongue were too sluggish to do their job. Instead, he just kind of grunted.
Pete spilled out of the backseat, landing on his knees. Dao-ming continued to cry, cradling her dead sister in her arms.
“Hold on, buddy! Don’t give up on me!” Pete babbled, scrambling to Mort on his hands and knees. He was gripping something in his fist.
Mort shook his head. Didn’t Pete understand? That sniper could have taken Mort out, but he hadn’t. He’d left Mort as bait, to draw the other passengers from the car.
He concentrated hard, dragging himself back from the dim, comforting place his thoughts were drifting towards. He swallowed, finally got his mouth parts to work. “’S too late, Pete,” he said weakly.
“You shut that shit up, lardass! You’ll be fine. Just hold on.”
The thing in Pete’s fist was a strap from Pete’s battered duffel bag. Pete wrapped it around Mort’s thigh, setting the tourniquet up high above the bullet wound. Mort cried out as Pete cinched it tight and fumbled a knot in the stiff material.
Mort grabbed Pete’s shirt with a bloody fist and pointed north.
“It blew up,” Mort hissed.
Pete’s eyes grew even wider. “Oh shit.”
Sitting in the Mercedes, Pete hadn’t felt the tremor when the plant exploded. The vehicle’s shocks had absorbed the vibration. With Dao-ming screaming and crying in his ear, he hadn’t heard the resounding drumroll of the reactor breach either. As far as they were from the plant, it had only sounded like a peal of thunder.
“Radiation,” Mort gasped. “You and Dao-ming need to go… now!”
“Fuck me runnin’,” Pete murmured, staring at the thickening plumes in the sky. Mort could tell by his blank expression that Pete had no idea what to do next. There were too many variables, too many problems, for his single track mind to process. Radiation cloud. Mort shot. Car wrecked. Girl dead. Zombies. Gunman. Mort could almost see the tilt signs flashing in his buddy’s eyes.
“Run, Pete. Take Dao-ming. Head west. Fast as you can,” Mort said.
“No!” Pete cried. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“Don’t move!” a gravelly voice called out behind him.
The gunman!
The sniper, or one of the snipers-- there might be more than one, Mort thought-- stepped out from behind the parking lot’s security shed. He was a big man, broad and solid, with a shiny bald head and a gray-stubbled chin. His body was barrel-shaped, massive with muscle. His arms looked as big around as Mort’s thighs, and that was saying something! He had a large high-powered rifle braced against his shoulder and was staring down the sights at Pete, his upper lip peeled back from his teeth.
“Put your hands up,” the gunman barked at Pete. “Lace your fingers behind your head!”
He was dressed all in black. Black tee, black jeans. He wore military-style lace up boots.
“You!” he said, the barrel of his gun sliding from Pete to the Mercedes-Benz. “Get out of the car, bitch! Right the fuck now!”
Dao-ming cursed the gunman in Chinese or Japanese. Mort didn’t know which it was. Maybe a mix of both.
“Get out or I’m going to blow your boyfriend’s head off,” the big man snapped.
Dao-ming obeyed, wobbling out on unsteady legs. She was covered in her sister’s blood. Her face was swollen, her eyes red and raw. She cursed the shooter again and spit in his direction.
“Save it, sister,” the gunman said with a smile. He cocked his head. Listened for a moment. As Dao-ming dropped to her knees beside Mort, putting her hands on him lightly, the sniper said breezily, “Sounds like all this racket has attracted some attention.”
His three captives listened. They heard it too. Zombies, several of them, on the hunt. The cries arose from multiple locations in the sprawling industrial park. They were getting louder and closer by the second.
“On your feet,” the big man said, gesturing with his rifle. “We need to get inside before they find us.” He smiled grimly when Pete and Dao-ming did not move. “It’s me or the zombies, kids. Take your pick.”
Dao-ming and Pete rose hesitantly. They hooked their hands under Mort’s arms to help him stand.
“Leave him,” the gunman said. “He’ll keep the rotters occupied while we take cover.”
“Fuck you!” Pete spat. “I ain’t leaving him for the deadheads. He’s my buddy.”
Their captor laughed. “Bring him along, then,” he said. “The more the merrier.”
Pete and Dao-ming heaved Mort up.
Mort shouted in pain.
“Go on! Leave me!” he gasped.
“We’re not leaving you behind,” Dao-ming sobbed. “Please, honey, try to stand up.”
“I can’t,” Mort moaned. The pain was a dark vortex and his soul was caught in its pull. He could feel his thoughts circling that sucking whirlpool like a fragile paper boat, spinning faster and faster. Any second now that little boat was going to sink down into darkness, and that would be it for him. No more Mort.
He fought that dreadful pull. He grit his teeth and pushed down with his legs. Blood pattered the pavement beneath him. His pants were soaked. Dao-ming and Pete were struggling to hold him up, so he tried to bear a little more of his own weight. The pain freshened him right up. Seething and spitting through his gritted teeth, Mort hobbled forward. There was so much blood running down his leg his shoe squished with each step.
“Shit, you’re heavy,” Pete grunted. “‘S like trying to carry a moose.”
Mort snorted a ragged laugh.
Dao-ming said nothing. Though she helped Mort walk, she had retreated into her own anguish. She sniffed, eyes downcast, still crying for her sister as they moved.
Impatient, the gunman gestured them past him. He directed them toward the big building at the end of the street: the DuChamp Freight Company. “Pick it up,” he barked as he followed behind. He listened to the pursuing zombies. The howls were getting closer. “There. Through those doors,” he gestured with the rifle. “Hurry. If those zombies see us, we’ll have a mob of them to contend with.”
Each shuffling step was agony for Mort. He could feel his consciousness waxing and waning. Mort, Pete and Dao-ming entered the freight company building through a large set of double glass doors. Ahead of them stret
ched a long tiled hallway with offices on both sides. Their captor forced them at gunpoint down the hallway, around the corner, down another hallway and then up a staircase. The stairs, finally, were what defeated Mort. Halfway up the flight of steps, he passed out.
This is it for me, Mort thought as the world went very still and slow. It was like being buried in warm gray ash. I hope they make it without me. The thought came without fear or remorse.
Time passed. How much time, Mort wasn’t sure. There was a sense of its passage when his awareness stirred and he began to surface from the dark pool of unconsciousness-- a fuzzy count of the number of times his heart had beat while he was comatose, the progression of his bodily processes. His belly gurgled, demanding nourishment. His bladder strained with the need to urinate.
He’d had his gall bladder removed a few years before, collateral damage of a lifelong love affair with bad food. Coming to felt kind of like coming out of the anesthesia when he’d had surgery. One moment he was nothing and nobody and nowhere, and then he was awake, but he felt dislocated and unreal, like he’d become lucid inside one of his own dreams. He couldn’t quite remember where he was, who he was, or how he’d come to be wherever it was he abruptly found himself.
“Mort! Hey, buddy! You’re awake!”
A familiar voice. Pete! Somewhere off to his right.
Mort turned his head and there was Pete. His buddy. His bro. Pete smiled. His teeth were too white. His face was still covered in blood, dried and brown now, like some kind of flaky shellack.
“Pete,” Mort whispered, his voice crackling.
Pete jerked his shoulders in an odd way, and Mort realized his friend was bound to his chair. Bands of gray duct tape encircled his chest, wrists, even his ankles.
Coming more fully awake, Mort looked for Dao-ming. She was nodding in another chair in the corner of the room, similarly bound. Her cheek rested against her shoulder. Her silken black hair hung in her face.
Mort tried to rise and found he was also restrained. He pulled against the bindings but could not break them. His efforts did little but make his head throb. The wound in his thigh, however, was numb. Pete’s tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but it had also cut off the circulation to the limb. His right leg had gone to sleep.
Mort surveyed the room they were being held in. Judging by the metal shelves and filing cabinets, it was some kind of storage office. Its chrome shelves were stocked with shipping supplies, neatly organized: rolls of bubble wrap, boxes of tape and padded envelopes, labels, markers. The room was about twenty feet wide and twenty feet long. There were no windows, only one door. A Coleman lantern hissed on a desk over in the corner, its glow white and without glamour.
“Where… where’s the gunman?” Mort croaked.
Pete shrugged. “I dunno. He made me tape you to that chair, then he made Dao-ming tape me, then he did her and took off. He’s been gone about an hour, I think.
“How many are there?” Mort asked.
Pete shook his head. “I only seen the one guy.”
Mort was afraid they’d been ambushed by a survivalist group. This was better. If it was just the one guy, they had a better chance of escaping.
“How’s Dao-ming?”
Pete looked toward their sleeping companion. He made a pained expression, cut his eyes toward Mort. He didn’t have the heart to say it, but his expression was eloquent enough. Dongmei’s murder had broken her sister’s spirit. Dao-ming had given up. That’s why she was sleeping when she should have been fighting, trying to come up with some plan to win their freedom.
“We need to figure out what the guy wants,” Mort said. They heard footfalls coming down the hallway and Mort clammed up. A moment later, the door opened. The sniper strolled in, pushing a metal cart in front of him.
“The city is burning,” their captor said cheerily. “It’s beautiful. The skyline’s all orange and red. It looks like heaven is bleeding.” He glanced at Mort and his eyes flashed. “You’re still alive! And awake! I didn’t expect that. I thought you’d die while I was preparing.”
Dao-ming roused. She caught sight of her sister’s killer and began to struggle against her bindings, cursing. Mort realized he’d been wrong about her. She hadn’t given up. She’d merely been resting until her enemy returned.
The killer raised his eyebrows. His gut tightened with laughter, barely restrained. “I’m impressed. Who would have thought such a pretty little thing could know so many nasty curse words.”
Dao-ming’s cheeks trembled. “I want to kill you!” she screeched. She lunged upwards with her body, making the chair hop and scrape across the floor. “If I get loose from here--!”
“Shut up,” the gunman said mildly, and he leveled a kick into Dao-ming’s breast, knocking her, and the chair, onto their backs.
Dao-ming gulped like a fish. The blow had knocked the wind out of her. She stared at the ceiling, gasping, her hair fanned out on the floor in a glossy black corona.
“Stop!” Mort cried. “Listen, dude—please!-- don’t hurt her! What do you want? Maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement. We don’t even know why you’re holding us. We don’t have anything of value. We’re just trying to get out of the city.”
Their captor glanced at Mort with false sympathy. “It’s probably too late already,” he said without rancor. He swiveled his cart around carefully, one of the wheels squeaking. It was a big stainless steel cart, the kind they used in the food service industry. “I’m sure we’re being dosed with gamma rays and neutron radiation even as we speak. That explosion earlier was the nuclear power plant blowing up. The whole city’s in flames.” He lifted an odd-looking instrument from the wheeled cart. It was a phallic metal implement, greasy blue, with a pistol grip. Just the sight of it froze Mort’s heart.
The bald man caressed the barrel of the tool. He encircled the shaft with his hand and stroked it slowly up and down. “Nobody gets out of this world alive,” he said with a dreamy leer. “That’s something my father used to say. It’s a truism, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun first!”
The big man stroked the bulbous end of the weapon against his cheek and lips, then snapped out of whatever fantasy world had claimed him there for a moment. He strolled across the room toward Mort. Though he was mountainous, his gait was smooth and cat-like. The muscles in his thick arms twitched and jerked as he stroked the cock-like barrel of his-- weapon? tool?-- whatever it was. Mort realized the man had gotten an erection. The gunman’s organ bulged against the front of his jeans, angled up and to the left, looking very large and very hard. The sight of the man’s erection, the intense look in the man’s eyes, withered any hope Mort might have had of release. Their captor was no bandit. He was a lunatic!
Straddling Mort’s thighs like a lover, the madman whispered into his ear: “My name is Richard Rourke, but the people I worked for had a nickname for me. They called me Da Vinci. Oh, you’ve never heard of me! No one has. I was very, very good at my job. I used to kill people for a living, you know? But now the world has ended. The world has ended, and I’m just doing it to occupy my mind.”
Mort tried to twist away from the terrible, unwanted intimacy, the weight of the man’s body in his lap, the heat of the man’s breath on his skin, but the lunatic, Da Vinci, turned Mort’s face back with the cold steel barrel of the weapon.
“Your name is Mort,” he murmured, looking piercingly into Mort’s eyes. “I heard your friends call you that. I think name’s are important. They’re magic, almost. So much summed up by so little. You’re whole life. Your identity. Your memories. One syllable. A breath. A pursing of the lips. The flick of a tongue against the roof of the mouth. Mort, Mort, Mort...”
“Get off him, you big fag!” Pete hectored. “Leave him alone!”
Da Vinci glared toward Pete, annoyed. “Relax, pretty boy. You’ll get your turn.” He returned his attention to Mort. His eyes were gray and soulless, but bright, like a serpent’s eyes. Though emotion played across the madman�
�s features, those same emotions did not touch his eyes. His gaze reminded of cold, desolate plains covered in snow. Secret groves locked in ice. Places where it would be a simple thing to hide a body. Maybe even a lot of bodies.
“I normally like to take my time, get to know the people I kill. Sometimes we even become friends. The way the city’s burning, though, I don’t think we’ll have the time to get to that place. It’s a shame, really. I’ve been so lonely these past few weeks. I haven’t had anyone to play with except the dead, and they’re no fun at all.”
Mort sensed the man’s words belied a deeper, darker sentiment. A longing. He needed something from Mort—but what? If Mort could figure out what that need was, maybe it could win their freedom.
The man leaned in. His lips brushed Mort’s ear. “My mother was a Christian woman. She dragged my father and I to church every week, twice on Sunday and once every Thursday night,” he whispered. “We hated church, me and pop. All those phonies in their fancy Sunday clothes, pretending they believed. Even when I was a kid I knew it was all just an act. They were only there for the show. That’s what my father said, and it was a thing that I beheld to be true. I could see it in their faces, the way they looked a person up and down, like they were wondering just how tasty you might be. When we got home after church, my father would change into work clothes while my mother made us lunch, and after we had eaten, he would take me out to the forest. Every churchday we went to the forest to chop wood. We were very, very poor. Do you know what else we did in the forest?”
Mort shook his head, half-hypnotized by the man’s silky voice.
Da Vinci licked his lips. He leaned in even closer, putting the barrel of the weapon to Mort’s skull. “My father hunted me. He hunted me and when he caught me, he raped me. Every Sunday. Every time we went to chop wood. It was our secret game. Or maybe ritual is a better word to describe it. The forest was our temple, Mort. The temple of the only real God. Mankind is ruled by his animal nature. Not some invisible old man floating up in the clouds. You can feel it... in here... down there... When you fuck. When you kill. It pulls at you, as insistent as gravity, and yet men pretend to be something more than animals. He pretends to be clean and good and tame, dresses his vulgar nakedness in fine clothes and talks of love and peace and forgiveness, but it’s just a lie, or a ruse. My father showed me the truth. We’re all just animals, rutting and killing and shitting in the wilderness.”
Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders) Page 18
